A trail camera in a remote Polish forest has captured wolves gingerly wading through a narrow stream and then leaping onto the bank on the other side.
The remarkable thing about the footage? Two of the wolves are completely black, a highly unusual colouration for the species, especially in Europe, where they are mostly grey with often a tinge of red or black.
The camera belongs to Polish NGO the SAVE Wildlife Conservation Fund, and the footage was taken last year, but SAVE is not revealing exactly where. According to its manager and wolf project coordinator Joanna Toczydłowska, it is likely that the wolves picked up the gene that gives them this abnormal appearance from interbreeding with domestic dogs.
This gene, Toczydłowska explains, has both pros and cons – when wolves have two copies of it (resulting in them being black), they have greater immunity to canine distemper virus (CDV) but coupled with that is lower fertility and generally poorer rates of survival. Hence, it is generally very rare.
“In Yellowstone National Park in the US, where there are outbreaks of distemper every few years, there are an unusually large number of black wolves,” Toczydłowska says. "The source of CDV is probably human-raised cattle, from which the virus (which mutated) jumped to humans (measles) and dogs (CDV), and then moved to some wolf populations.”
The Wildlife Conservation Fund now hopes to collect scats in the area where the two black wolves – probably siblings – were seen to try and establish more about where exactly the gene came from.
According to a European Commission report from 2021, there are an estimated 1,900 wolves in Poland, and they are found in every major forest and many smaller ones. A map of their geographic range within Poland shows they are in much of the north, east and west of the country, with some also in the south-east.
"They are doing well, adapting to living close to humans and trying to avoid us temporally and spatially,” says Toczydłowska. “There is a lot of prey in our forests and generally good habitat conditions.”
Nevertheless, pressures on the species exist. Development of housing and commercial infrastructure is largely uncontrolled, Toczydłowska argues, resulting in loss and fragmentation of habitat, and poachers kill an estimated 100 wolves every year, even though it is illegal.
There is some conflict with livestock famers, though most wolves prefer to prey on wild animals – in Poland, most of their diet is red and roe deer and wild boar, plus a fairly high proportion of beaver.
Image and video credit: SAVE Wildlife Conservation Fund Poland
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