Hunting dogs are at biggest risk to get attacked by wolves near wolves’ territory boundaries
Tikkunen, Mari; Kojola, Ilpo (2019-07-16)
Tikkunen, M. & Kojola, I. Mamm Res (2019) 64: 581. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13364-019-00444-3
© The Author(s) 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi-fe2019111237725
Tiivistelmä
Abstract
Wolves’ attacks on hunting dogs are a major conflict between wolves and hunters in Northern Europe. The reasons affecting the risk of wolves’ (Canis lupus) attacks on hunting dogs are poorly known. We examined whether the number of wolves in territory, the territory size, and the space use of GPS-collared wolves affected the risk of fatal attacks during hunting season in Finland. We found that attacks were more frequent within the periphery than core of the territory. Based on locations of GPS-collared wolves, wolves spent 8% (range 2–12%, n = 17) of time within the border zone (11% of the territory area) of their territory. Forty-five percent of all attacks considered (n = 11) took place within this zone which was high proportion as compared to the distribution of wolf locations. This result might reflect wolves’ motivational status to eliminate potential competitors when they are moving near territory boundaries.
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