For the first time in 100 years, a pioneering wolf was spotted in Belgium. The wolf is Naya, a female, which originally came from eastern Germany and traveled across Europe.

During her journey, Naya killed two sheep and injured a third sheep near Meerhout, a Belgian town, The Guardian reported. Her arrival in Belgium means that Naya had completed her trek to every mainland country in Europe.

Wary farmers

However, sheep farmers in Belgium are now on full alert because of the animal's return to the country. Hugh Jansman, a researcher from the Wageningen University, warned sheep farmers in the country that they are in the range of Naya. Jansman followed the westward journey of the pioneering female wolf across hundreds of miles in the continent which was possible because Naya was fitted with a GPS tracker in 2016.

When Naya was six months old, researchers at the Technical University of Dresden fitted her with a tracking device on a collar. She left her parental pack in rural Lübtheener Heide, which is between Hamburg and Berlin, to strike out across Germany, into The Netherlands, and to Belgium on January 3.

There is a swift repopulation of the predator animal in Europe. Naya is part of the migratory wave of wolves that began in 2000 with the first wolf pack in eastern Germany. Since then, the pack has grown to 74 cub packs in eastern Germany. In Lower Saxony, there was a female wolf that settled which has grown to 14 packs of cubs, Jansman said.

Because of the presence of the growing number of pioneering wolves, people are abandoning agricultural areas which are now re-wilding again. It left a lot of space for carnivores to thrive. Jansman noted the rapid increase in the number of wolves that are coming to The Netherlands and Belgium. He noted the speed of the animal.

70 km a night

In the case of Naya, she can move swiftly and has been covering between 30 km. and 70 km. a night, according to the transmitter on the wolf's collar. She went through swamplands and forests in search of a lair to establish her pack. Reports of dead sheep in the Netherlands tally with Naya's movements.

Naya, he said, is in the blue ocean, still in search of a free habitat, unlike the other wolves that stay in their area, go on a trek, and walk hundreds of kilometers before settling down. Naya went past four or five natural parks in The Netherlands, but after one or two days left the place, indicating the she-wolf was looking for something else.

Jansman guessed it could be the smell of humans here is less because it is the first place where Naya found a big military area which makes it a prime spot to settle down. Besides tracks of dead sheep, Jansman also discovered leftover roes and hares along Naya's path, but the wolf avoided humans.

Pioneering wolves at Yellowstone

Other than Europe, other wild animals too were threatened when the grey wolf returned to the Yellowstone National Park in the US in 1995. According to the author of "Wolf Nation: The Life, Death, and Return of Wild American Wolves," Brenda Peterson, after the last wolves in Yellowstone were killed in 1926, the coyotes thrived.

Following their return, Peterson wrote that there are at least 98 wolves in the park in 10 packs. Their numbers are thrice as many as the elks in the park in 1968. The beaver colony has also grown to nine from only one in 1995.

Beneficial effects of the return of the wolves

Ecologists usually consider the trophic-top-down cascade – which describes the flow-on effects of removing a top predator – as negative. But in the case of the Yellowstone National Park, the effects were positive because the return of the grey wolves, the top predators, had a beneficial impact beyond the beavers and the willows.

Peterson noted that when the Yellowstone National Park was created in 1872, the grey wolf population was already declining in Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho. Because of the government predator control programs in the early years of the 20th century, the extermination of the species was sped up. By the 1920s, the grey wolves were all gone.

She explained the extermination program to the early settlers viewing the wolf as like the wilderness which is something that must be excluded and subdued. Peterson pointed out that the wolf is the most misunderstood and maligned animal while being, at the same time, a majestic and mysterious creature.

Douglas Smith, a biologist, called the wolf a paradox, Cosmos Magazine noted. He said the wolf is a creature of extraordinary strength and with the ability to thrive if given half a chance. The beast can also be a reminder of "how frail natural vitality can be when humans are determined to wipe it from the face of the Earth."

[researchpaper 리서치페이퍼=​Vittorio Hernandez 기자]

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