IUCN Canid Specialist Group

24/06/2026

🐺🪖🛫🌲 Could military lands help bring red wolves back?

With fewer than 30 red wolves (Canis rufus) estimated to remain in the wild, recovering the species will require more than protecting its last population in North Carolina. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Red Wolf Recovery Plan calls for additional wild populations, but identifying suitable places to establish them has remained one of the greatest challenges.

A new commentary in the Journal of Wildlife Management asks whether military lands in the southeastern United States could be part of the answer.

These landscapes are often large, relatively undeveloped, and managed with restricted public access. They can support abundant prey, including white-tailed deer, and may offer the capacity for the long-term management needed to reduce two of the red wolf’s most persistent challenges: anthropogenic mortality and hybridization with coyotes.

📍 The authors highlight Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, Fort Stewart in Georgia, and Fort Polk/Fort Johnson in Louisiana as promising areas for further evaluation.

Of course, suitable habitat alone is not enough. Any future red wolf reintroduction would still depend on community engagement, legal and political support, conflict prevention, intensive coyote management, and a long-term commitment to recovery.

But as the authors argue, military lands have been largely overlooked in past red wolf planning. For one of the world’s most endangered canids, it may be time to look again.

📖 Keating, M.P. et al. (2026). Military lands provide an opportunity to recover red wolves. Journal of Wildlife Management, e70232.

🔗 https://doi.org/10.1002/jwmg.70232

📸 Photos: Cyndi Goetcheus, Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge OBX Wildlife

16/06/2026

🐺🦬 Wolves vs. bison - in the forest

Many of us are familiar with footage of wolves hunting bison on the prairies of North America.

But European bison?

A new Nature Note in Ecology and Evolution reports something rarely documented: wolves attacking a European bison (Bison bonasus) herd in Białowieża Primaeval Forest, Poland.

The video shows a pack of seven wolves targeting a newborn bison calf. The wolves managed to grab the calf twice, but the adult bison responded quickly, charging at the wolves and surrounding the calf until the pack gave up.

No kill was recorded, but the footage is important because European bison are often described as a “non-prey” species for wolves in modern European systems.

This observation suggests the story may be more complicated.
European bison are clearly difficult prey. Adults are enormous, dangerous, and capable of defending calves as a group. But newborn calves may still be vulnerable, especially when large wolf packs are involved.

The authors are careful not to overstate the case. This does not mean wolves are major predators of European bison. But it does show that wolf-bison interactions may be more important, and more underdocumented, than previously assumed.

As both wolf and European bison populations continue to recover in parts of Europe, observations like this can help us better understand how predator-prey dynamics are returning to rewilded landscapes.

📖 Wijnands & Borowik (2026). The King in the Crosshairs: Evidence of a Predation Attempt on European Bison by Wolves. Ecology and Evolution. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.73752

🎥 Video: Mammal Research Institute, Polish Academy of Sciences Instytut Biologii Ssaków PAN - Mammal Research Institute PAS

04/06/2026

How do wolves stay wild in a landscape full of people?

A new study from Germany explores something many people wonder as wolves return to Europe:

Can wolves live near us without becoming used to us?

Researchers tracked 18 wolves across five German federal states using GPS collars, and the answer was surprisingly clear:

The wolves were not becoming “tame” or comfortable around humans. Instead, they were carefully adjusting their behavior to avoid us.

Some of the patterns were striking:

🏘️ Wolves stayed mostly inactive during the daytime, when people were busiest
🌲 They preferred areas with more cover, especially during daylight hours
🛣️ Roads and urban areas were generally avoided during the day
🐾 Open areas were used more often at night, when human activity dropped

In other words, these wolves are sharing the landscape with people while still trying very hard not to be seen.

That may actually be one of the keys to coexistence.

Even in one of Europe’s most human-dominated landscapes, wolves appear to remain highly sensitive to human presence rather than becoming habituated to it.

📖 Reinhardt et al. (2026). How to stay wild in a highly domesticated landscape? Spatiotemporal behaviour of wolves in Germany. Wildlife Biology.

📷 A three-legged female wolf from the Rosenthal pack in the study's area. © Erik Eckstein, iNaturalist, CC-BY-NC

02/06/2026

🐺🦊 Wolves, jackals, and the “human shield”

Golden jackals (Canis aureus) are undergoing one of the most dramatic range expansions of any native mammal in Europe.

But what is driving their spread?

A new study in Nature Ecology & Evolution used jackal howling surveys from nearly 9,000 locations across Central and Southeastern Europe to understand where jackals occur, and why.

The results show a fascinating balance between climate, habitat, wolves, and peoples:

🐺 Wolf presence was the strongest factor limiting jackal colonization
❄️ Jackals were more likely where snow-cover duration was shorter
🌳 Jackal presence was linked to intermediate forest cover and proximity to water
🧍 Human presence can weaken wolf suppression through a “human shield” effect
🌍 Models suggest large parts of Europe remain suitable for future jackal expansion

The “human shield” effect is especially interesting; where wolves are absent, jackals generally avoid human settlements. But where wolves are present, jackals may use areas closer to people, potentially reducing the risk of encounters with their larger competitors.

This study highlights how human activity can reshape interactions between carnivores, not only by changing habitats directly, but by altering the relationship between apex predators and mesocarnivores.

It also suggests that recovering wolf populations may help regulate expanding jackal populations, but only where wolves reach ecologically meaningful densities and maintain stable social structures.

📖 Ranc et al. (2026). Human shielding from wolves facilitates jackal expansion across Europe. Nature Ecology & Evolution.

📸 Photos: Martin Steenhaut; Miha Krofel

28/05/2026

01/05/2026

A stunning female Arabian wolf (Canis lupus arabs), lovely sight😊