Wolf visitations close to human residences in Finland: The role of age, residence density, and time of day

Abstract

Large carnivorous mammals, such as the gray wolf (Canis lupus) have been recently expanding to human-dominated landscapes in many regions. Although wolves tend to avoid human infrastructure, visitations close to human residences might be unavoidable in territories that are highly fragmented by residential areas. House yard visits are of particular concern: according to Finnish legislation, wolves that repeatedly approach within 150 m from the nearest residential building can legally be killed for human safety. We analyzed the average distance from house yards and probability of house yard visitations by wolves against sex, age class, time of day, season and house density for 25 territorial GPS-tracked wolves in Finland. Generally, wolves avoid houseswith mean distances higher than from random locations in the territory. This difference became higher with decreasing house density for sub-adults whilst for adults this difference decreased slightly with decreasing house density. Probability of visitation in house-yards increased with increasing house densities, was far higher at night than in the daytime, a difference that was greater with increasing house density. Sub-adults visited house-yards more often than adult wolves in the first summer after spring dispersal from the natal pack to a territory, but there was no difference in

Social, behavioural and temporal components of wolf (Canis lupus) responses to anthropogenic landscape features in the central Apennines, Italy

“…Indeed, selection of secondary roads during winter by pack members when resting contrasts with results obtained from areas where wolves recently started to recolonize human‐altered landscapes (e.g. Zimmermann et al , ; Kojola et al , ), or where they are more impacted by higher degrees of anthropogenic modifications (Llaneza et al , ).…”

“…Theuerkauf, Rouys & Jedrzejewski, ; Jędrzejewski et al , ; Kaartinen et al , ), in human‐modified environments wolves do not always necessarily travel far from settlements, especially if these areas feature higher prey densities (Kojola et al , ) or availability of anthropogenic foods (Ciucci et al , ). Expectedly, as already noted for roads, wolf responses to settlements are also known to vary between daylight and night hours, with wolves generally approaching human settlements at night (Ciucci et al , ; Kojola et al , ), most likely to take advantage of a decreased human activity and the associated risk (Gaynor et al , ). Wolf responses to anthropogenic landscape features (hereafter, anthropogenic features) should also be analysed while taking into account the environmental context in which they are implanted.…”

Payments for Improved Ecostructure (PIE): Funding for the Coexistence of Humans and Wolves in Finland

“…1 for territories in 2014). Kojola et al (2016) state that although most wolves aim to avoid human settlements in Finland they sometimes do approach human habitations, particularly at night in those wolf territories with a higher than average number of human residences. Although these instances are short, they may cause fear in people in general as well as concern about the safety of children in particular, which may lead to municipalities taking actions such as occasionally organizing specific school transportation.…”

“…Damages to livestock are a concern in these areas and mostly impact sheep farms (Kojola et al 2016). Kaartinen et al (2009) analyzed sheep damages from wolf predation from 1998-2004 in Finland and concluded that only 1 % of all sheep farms in the country had been affected.…”

Preadaptative Transactions and Institutional Change: Wolf‐critical activism in southwestern Finland

“…To support the claims, they asked police to investigate evidence that the association delivered to police in the autumn of 2012. Scientific evidence indicates that in some territories, night-time visits of wolves have indeed been rather common, but most of the 25 GPS-collared wolves in territories during 2003-2012 have commonly avoided human residences (Kojola et al, 2016). (On rumours about the wolf translocations elsewhere in Europe, see Skogen et al, 2008;Theodorakea and von Essen, 2016.…”