Abstract
The Scandinavian wolf population is small and geographically isolated and suffers from high levels of inbreeding with consequential negative fitness effects on pup survival and recruitment to the breeding population. Its recovery on the Scandinavian Peninsula has fuelled strong social controversy and in 2009 the Swedish government decided to temporarily control the population at 210 individuals through harvest during a three-year period while carrying out active management actions to improve the genetic situation. However, the European Commission has questioned that this new strategy would preclude the population from reaching a Favourable Conservation Status. In this project, we propose to investigate the traits affected by inbreeding and the factors critical for the avoidance of inbreeding and loss of genetic variation in the wolf population. This analysis will serve as a basis for the development of a wolf individual-based demo-genetic model that we will use to investigate the effects of different types of management strategies. Based on the reconstruction of the whole population pedigree, we plan to evaluate strategies pointing towards the removals of specific wolves. The deliverables from the project aim to facilitate the conciliation of population control and viability.
Sweden