What happens to the wolves that are killed?

Wolves killed in Switzerland have a long journey ahead of them after death. While the autopsy of the wolves takes place in Bern after every regular shooting in Switzerland, the genetic identification of the animals is carried out at the University of Lausanne.

The specialists at the Animal Hospital of the University of Bern examine the wolf carcasses to determine the cause of death and the health status of the animals.

The researchers from the University of Lausanne (UNIL) use DNA samples to find out which wolf it is. Luca Fumagalli, who runs the only laboratory in Switzerland that analyzes the DNA of large carnivores, has already included more than 500 individual wolves in his database.

The identification of hunted wolves is based on tissue samples. However, most DNA analyzes in the Unil Nature Conservation Biology Laboratory (LBC) take place non-invasively, i.e. without direct sampling.

“We work primarily on the basis of samples found in the field that are deposited when an animal passes by, such as feces, hair or saliva – and therefore not from captured or observed animals. These samples are then sent to us anonymously, for all species,” Fumagalli told the Keystone-SDA news agency.

The genetic analysis of the hunted wolves represents only a small part compared to the non-invasive analyses, Fumagalli points out. “However, these analyzes are the simplest because we obtain a biologically rich genetic sample, whether it is a piece of muscle meat or other tissue from the animal,” he said.

The scientists use the DNA samples to determine whether they actually come from a wolf and whether it is an already known individual or not. In almost 25 years, Fumagalli has already registered about 530 wolves in its database that have ever been in Switzerland.

Since 1999, Fumagalli’s team has analyzed an average of 300 to 400 non-invasive samples annually on behalf of the Federal Office for the Environment. According to the researcher, this number has increased to around 2,000 per year in the past three years. His laboratory collaborates with the Kora Foundation, which is responsible for monitoring large carnivores in Switzerland.

The LBC is a laboratory for fundamental research. The team of about ten people, including three part-time employees who are solely responsible for the wolf, conducts research into the genetics of wild animal populations. The goal is to reconstruct the genetic evolutionary history of a species like the wolf.

“The wolves found in Switzerland almost all belong to the same genetic lineage, namely that characteristic of the wild Italian population and present exclusively in the latter,” Fumagalli explains. Only a small surviving population of this wolf population remained in the 20th century, for example in Spain and the Balkans.

“About a century ago the wolf was doomed,” says the professor. “Then through natural recolonization it returned from Central-South to Northern Italy and reached the Alps in the late 1980s.” It is important to emphasize that the wolf returned to Switzerland on its own and was not reintroduced by humans.

(hah/sda)