0000000001327124
AUTHOR
Djuro Huber
Unravelling the scientific debate on how to address wolf-dog hybridization in Europe
Anthropogenic hybridization is widely perceived as a threat to the conservation of biodiversity. Nevertheless, to date, relevant policy and management interventions are unresolved and highly convoluted. While this is due to the inherent complexity of the issue, we hereby hypothesize that a lack of agreement concerning management goals and approaches, within the scientific community, may explain the lack of social awareness on this phenomenon, and the absence of effective pressure on decision-makers. By focusing on wolf x dog hybridization in Europe, we hereby (a) assess the state of the art of issues on wolf x dog hybridization within the scientific community, (b) assess the conceptual base…
Artificial feeding of wildlife: where do we go?
Food provisioning to wildlife is an issue of increasing conservation concern due to its consequences on species and ecosystems. Humans have increased the amount of food available to wildlife and its spatio-temporal predictability; about 30–40% of all food produced in the world is wasted (1). One of these practices, quite widespread, is the artificial feeding of game animals. Here, we take the brown bear Ursus arctos as a model species to review the magnitude of artificial feeding in Europe and the documented effects on the ecology and behavior of the species. In most of the European countries where brown bears are hunted, artificial feeding is applied, mostly to facilitate hunting. However,…
New highways and maintenance of large carnivore habitat continuity – a Croatian experience
Brown bears (Ursus arctos), grey wolves (Canis lupus) and Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx) inhabiting the Dinara Mountains of Croatia belong to the large and stable population of these large carnivores nearest to the Alps. Together with the neighboring Slovenian population segment, they comprise the source for recolonization of the Alps and much of Western Europe, either through natural migrations or transplanting of captured animals. The new highway has been constructed through the main portion of the large carnivore's core area in Gorski kotar during the period from 1996 to 2004. The current large carnivore range in Croatia was intersected with a fenced highway, possibly splitting the Dinaric mo…