The record migration of a wolf: in Europe it traveled 1927 kilometers in 9 months
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Driven by the search for food, an area where to start a new herd, or perhaps simply by a curious disposition and good resistance, the wolf M237 set the record for the longest migration. According to the information provided by Koraa Swiss foundation for the conservation of wildlife, especially predators, the young wolf monitored with a radio collar covered 1927 km on the ground (829 km as the crow flies) in 9 months. Having left Switzerland, where the radio collar had been applied to him, M237 arrived in Hungary and could go even further.
As a comparison, the Kora foundation on its website mentions the migration of German wolf Alan, which in 2009 migrated from Germany to Belarus, traveling about 1550 km. Two years later, it was possible to trace the gps signal of the Slavic wolf, which moved from Slovenia to Italy for almost 1200 km. Slavc, who comes from the Dinaric population, later mated with a female from the Alpine population. “It was the first known evidence of a link between the two populations – writes Kora – In general, long-distance migrants are very important in connecting populations”. Swiss experts speculate that M237 could also lead to a new link, because it is not very far from an area of another wolf population, that of the Carpathians.
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M237 was born in the canton of Graubünden, a transmitter was attached to it by the Graubünden Hunting and Fishing Office and it migrated hundreds of kilometres, from June 2022 to March 2023, due east to the border between Hungary and Slovakia. The canton of Graubünden has thus managed to document the longest known migration of a wolf in Europe.
M237 was born in 2021, and is part of a litter of 6 puppies in herd of Stagias. Her genealogy is well outlined by the Kora foundation, which identified her mother, the she-wolf F31descended from the founder of the first Swiss wolf pack of the Calanda, and his father, the wolf M125 of unknown origin. “At the end of March 2022, M237 was captured by the hunting and fishing office of the Canton of Grisons and fitted with a collar with a gps transmitter – writes Kora -. By the deadline of March 22, 2023, its transmitter had already provided very interesting data for research. This is also because M237 started its migration already a few months after receiving the transmitter, in June 2022. Before that, it remained in its pack of origin”.
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The young wolf crossed Switzerland, crossed the border withItaly, in the Lower Engadine, at the end of June 2022. He wandered for about ten days in South Tyrol and then crossed the border into Austria. From then on she walked north, then northeast. In October he was in the region of Innsbruck, from where it continued through Tyrol to Vienna. He spent the end of the year west of the Austrian capital, then wandered up to the Danube, to then change his mind and head southeast. In mid-February he crossed the Hungarian border and migrated to Budapest. It took him about a month to pass the city to the west and cross the Danube. After that, he walked towards the Slovakia.
The migration of M237 is not a rarity and demonstrates the adaptability of wolves. The young specimen was able to move in territories with very different characteristics, it crossed rivers, cultivated fields, anthropized regions, mountains other 3500 meters. These migrations usually take place after the first year of age, when the wolves leave the territory of the pack of origin to look for an area in which to form a new pack. But each specimen does it in its own way, because the particularity of each individual cannot be underestimated: “In every species it happens to find an animal that is more curious, more prone to exploration,” he explains Ezio Ferroglioprofessor of parasitology at the University of Turin – just in recent days we have identified one ibexan animal that hardly moves at low altitudes, in the lowest part of the Val di Susa, in Musinè”.
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The long migration of M237 also proves that the wolf population is expanding throughout the Alps. According to the recent Ispra census, only 950 specimens move around our Alpine arc (there are almost 2400 distributed along the rest of the peninsula). “It is an expansion that we must monitor carefully – observes Ferroglio – in the case of my specific studies the long migration of M237 also makes me think about the possible introduction of new pathogens in different areas. Certainly wolves in the Alps, not just ours slopes, they are doing well: they find ungulates to eat, the renaturalisation of vast areas creates a suitable habitat with excellent possibilities for feeding.It suffices to say that this morning I sighted two of them 20 km from the center of Turin: this is excellent news which, however, has a series management consequences. We need to invest in policies to avoid conflicts with man”.
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