Wiesbaden (dpa / lhe) – Experts have detected a new wolf territory in northern Hesse. It is located around Waldkappel in the Werra-Meißner district, as the Hessian State Agency for Nature Conservation, Environment and Geology (HLNUG) announced in Wiesbaden on Friday. The new territory results from the genetic evidence of two siblings. From their data, the experts were able to draw conclusions about the parents for whom genetic traces had already been registered several times, as the HLNUG explained.
The male and the female would now be counted as a pair retrospectively for the observation year 2021/2022 (May to April) and together with the puppies for the period 2022/2023 as a pack. According to HLNUG, it is known from camera images from July 2022 that there were five puppies in total.
The region in the Werra-Meißner district was known as wolf territory, but was attributed to the so-called Stölzinger she-wolf. This female can be ruled out as the mother of the puppies. According to the HLNUG, it was last genetically detected in the area in October 2021. The Hesse Wolf Center therefore decided to name a new territory for the new pair of wolves and pack.
As a spokeswoman for the HLNUG explained, traces of the two parents of the new pack have not yet been detected on a torn livestock. This shows that the couple hunt wild animals. The genetic evidence of the two offspring comes from a scat and a livestock kill.
The HLNUG also reported that five dead sheep that had been found on a pasture in Waldsolms in the Lahn-Dill district at the end of January were killed by a wolf. This was shown by the analysis of samples. The case is the second confirmed wolf attack on livestock in Hesse in 2023. In the previous year, eleven cases of damage to livestock by wolves were documented, with twenty livestock being killed.