Masterarbeit

The role of protected areas, forest cover and human disturbance on breeding site selection during the re-population of wolves in Germany

Hannah Pepe (02/2023-08/2023)

Betreuer: Carl Beierkuhnlein, Alexandra Lawrence

Since the return of wolves to Germany in the year 2000, this species has increased to over 150 packs and is found in half of Germany’s federal states. This spread is thought to be attributed to their protected status, being habitat generalists and tolerance to anthropogenically modified environments. However, wolves avoid human disturbance when possible, especially when selecting breeding sites within their territory. Elsewhere in Europe protected areas, low human disturbance and forest cover can be influential in breeding site selection. These factors are also likely to also play a role for Germany’s breeding wolves where 37.6% of its land is protected, and almost one third is forested. This study investigates the role of protected areas, forest cover and Human Footprint as a proxy for human disturbance on reproductive site selection for wolves in Germany. I compare sites of wolf occurrence without reproduction against wolf reproduction sites for the monitoring year 2020-2021 using binomial generalised linear models. The findings suggest that wolves positively select for protected areas and higher forest cover and are more avoidant of areas with high human influence when it comes to breeding site selection in comparison to overall habitat selection. Of these, forest cover was the best fitting model in explaining breeding site selection. The potential further expansion of wolves in Germany where apex predators have been scarce over the past few hundred years will likely have far-reaching ecological and socio-economic implications. The results of this study highlight opportunities for preventing human-wolf conflicts in core breeding areas and can be applied to effective management for both wolves and people.