Wolves are important for regulating wildlife populations

Even in landscapes dominated by humans, large carnivores such as brown bears or wolves – so-called apex predators – play a decisive role in regulating wildlife populations.

This is the result of a joint study by scientists, recently published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society.

It is widely known that apex predators are of crucial importance for shaping the ecosystem in natural landscapes. With their study, the scientists have now been able to demonstrate that even in human-shaped cultural landscapes the carnivores retain their important function as regulators of the wildlife population, in particular by reducing the number of herbivores. However, humans also play an important role here through their direct and indirect interventions in the ecosystem. Not only by reshaping nature through agricultural use, but above all through hobby hunting, humans actively influence the wildlife population at all levels of the food pyramid – mostly in a negative way.

For their investigation, the scientists used camera traps to observe the presence of wild animals in a human-dominated region in Transylvania/Romania. Besides apex predators such as brown bears and wolves, mid-sized predators such as red foxes as well as large herbivores such as roe deer and red deer are also native here. Humans and free-roaming dogs act as additional “predators” in this system.

“The strong effects of human activity on wildlife populations at all levels of the food pyramid that we have demonstrated show how necessary it is to systematically consider humans as part of the food pyramid in future,” says Ine Dorresteijn, lead author of the study. “Particularly against the backdrop that apex predators such as wolves are increasingly returning to human-dominated landscapes, it is important to understand what influence the simultaneous presence of these carnivores and humans has on the various levels of the food pyramid. Our investigation makes an important contribution to this.”

Related dossiers and articles:

• Dossier: The wolf in Europe
• Dossier: Hunting and biodiversity
• Dossier: Cultural landscape as a myth
• Dossier: Hunting myths
• Dossier: Alternatives to hobby hunting
• Introduction to hunting criticism
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