This comes from Brehm’s Tierlauben (Life of Animals) (1893).
It shows a pack of European wolves killing a wisent, also known as a European bison.
The wisent was already extinct in Germany by mid-eighteenth century, but wolves held on in Germany until the beginning of the twentieth century.
Brehm would have known about wolves hunting wisent from accounts from Eastern Europe.
However, wolves have been steadily recolonizing Germany from the east, but wisent have been gone a long time.
But they were recently reintroduced to a forest in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
The wolves are largely concentrated to the eastern part of the country, so scenes like this one aren’t going be seen any time soon.
But the potential is there.
Some day.
It might not be so long that wolves arrive in that region after all, at least if they keep expanding their range with the speed of the last few years.
Here`s a diagram that shows the currently known packs or stationary single idividuals:
http://www.wolfsregion-lausitz.de/verbreitung/verbreitung-in-deutschland
The broad green bars are known packs or pairs, the thinner green bars are stationary singels.
The whole site of the “Wolfsregion Lausitz” is pretty good and up to date about wolf population and monitoring in germany. Unfortunately only available in german.
I live in the very north eastern corner of North-Rhine Westphalia. The Wisent project is in the very south east of NRW, about a two hour drive away.
The next reproducing wolf population from me is about a two hours drive, too, but to the north, on the Munster Military Training Grounds in Lower Saxony. There are two adults and some pups from last summer.
The parents have been confirmed (via genetic analysis of scat) to have come from Saxony, where the first reproducing pack in germany was confirmed only back in 2000. Not long ago by any standard.
A number of wandering single wolves have been sighted in the last years (starting in 2007), with increasing frequency, all over Lower Saxony. Mainly in the eastern part of Lower Saxony, but also as far south as the Solling or even the Reinhardswald, which is in the north of Hesse.
Very recently one has been photographed inside the territory of the city of Hamburg.
Just in march this year a young wandering wolf was photographed with a photo-trap in the Emsland, near the city of Meppen, which is in the west of Lower Saxony, close to the border to the netherlands.
So, they are really proving again what is already known, that distances of a few 100 km are nothing for wolves in search of new territory.
There is suitable habitat (well, as suitable as some of the other places they started to re-populate in the last years…) in North-Rhine Westphalia as well.
For example the Senne, a military training ground used by the british forces since WWII and the neighboring lower mountain ranges of the Teutoburger Wald. Currently there`s a discussion about establishing a National Park there when the brits leave, but that`s still open and not looking so good right now…
However, that area is easily reachable for them and form there it`s not far anymore to the Rothaargebirge, where the Wisent project is.
So, who knows, if the Wisents are still there 10 years from now, they might very well encounter wolves.
Actually, I give the wolves far more of a chance to build a viable population in germany than the Wisent (or the brown bear, or the lynx).
Seems it is more a question of letting the wolves come back, it looks as if they are pretty adaptable with the choice of habitat and don`t need as much room and “wilderness” as other large mammals.
I`m curious how livestock predation or problems with wolves killing dogs, like in sweden, will develope here.
A few more links:
The pair on the military grounds in Munster:
http://www.ndr.de/regional/niedersachsen/heide/woelfe181.html
Video of the female with pups:
http://www.ndr.de/regional/niedersachsen/heide/woelfe193.html there are more videos of them, but couldn`t find them right now.
Some chronological pictures of wolves from Lower Saxony, including the one near Meppen from march.
http://www.ndr.de/regional/niedersachsen/woelfe281.html
Wolf near Hamburg:
http://www.ndr.de/fernsehen/sendungen/hamburg_journal/media/hamj26115.html
One of those German wolves was seen in Belgium a few years ago.
It won’t be long.
There is a small herd of european bison, which I visit from time to time, living less than twenty miles from this keyboard, at the Whipsnade wild animal park in southern England. As many will know, the European and American bison are interfertile and this was part of the problem when the former was being rescued from extinction, because there had been some breeding together of zoo populations of the two species in the years between the two world wars. I’ve had the privilege of seeing both species in the flesh and it seems to me that the americans are obviously the stockier and more powerful looking of the two. Incidentally. the whipsnade herd is close to a pack of wolves but they don’t get to play together. I wonder why.
The American Bison actually had (has?) a smaller forest dwelling subspecies that was closer to the Wisent in build.
I see that they have seen some individuals in Holstein. Go S-H!