European Wolves

[Ngala]

9 - NORTH-WEST IBERIAN POPULATION

"The North-west Iberian population is shared by Spain and Portugal. The population comprises 63 packs in Portugal (Alvares et al., 2005) and 297 wolf packs in Spain distributed over 91620 km2 [MAGRAMA (Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Environment), 2016]. In a previous census, Blanco, Cuesta & Reig (1990) estimated 294 packs occupying a range of 100000 km2. This population ranges across the north-western region of the Iberian Peninsula and in a small isolated subpopulation south of river Douro in Central Portugal (Alvares, 2004; Blanco, Cortés & Virgos, 2005; MAGRAMA, 2016). At the beginning of the 20th century, Iberian wolves were distributed throughout the peninsula (Rico & Torrente, 2000). However, as in other European wolf populations, in the middle of the 20th century, the Iberian population disappeared from most of its former range and was reduced to an all-time low in the 1970s (Valverde, 1971; Grande del Brío, 1984; Blanco et al., 1990). As a consequence of a severe demographic bottleneck in the 20th century, genetic studies have revealed a low effective population size (NE =43.2–53.8 in Sastre et al., 2011) and the inbreeding coefficient has varied in this population from 0.153 (Ramirez et al., 2006) to 0.177 (Sastre et al., 2011)."

The main threats
"This wolf population is considered by the IUCN as ‘Near Threatened (NT)’ because of the fragmentation in management regimes, the lack of a population-level management plan and the occurrence of largely unpredictable events (human reactions against wolves) that may threaten the population at the local level (IUCN, 2007). In fact, the lack of coordination between authorities in the two countries, together with the separation between science and management (Fernàndez-Gil et al., 2016), the lack of non-standardized census methods, particularly overestimating wolf pack size (Blanco & Cort´es, 2009) and unreliable breeding wolf pack estimations in several regions are considered critical issues for the NW Iberian population, given the fact that wolves are exposed to hunting or to regional administration culls (Echegaray & Vila', 2010; Fernàndez-Gil et al., 2016), except in Portugal, where they are fully protected (Pimenta et al., 2005; Kaczensky et al., 2013). Additionally, genetic assessement is not considered for management planning (but see Godinho et al., 2015)."

10 - SIERRA-MORENA POPULATION

The main threats


Source: 
Hindrikson, M., Remm, J., Pilot, M., Godinho, R., Stronen, A. V., Baltrūnaité, L., Czarnomska, S. D., Leonard, J. A., Randi, E., Nowak, C., Åkesson, M., López-Bao, J. V., Álvares, F., Llaneza, L., Echegaray, J., Vilà, C., Ozolins, J., Rungis, D., Aspi, J., Paule, L., Skrbinšek, T. and Saarma, U. (2016), Wolf population genetics in Europe: a systematic review, meta-analysis and suggestions for conservation and management. Biol Rev. doi:10.1111/brv.12298

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