According to the researchers, the animal traveled through three countries. He would travel from his birthplace in the German state of Lower Saxony to France, ending up in the Catalan Pyrenees. The wolf was last seen there in February 2023. The head of the Center for Wild Animal Genetics, Carsten Nowak, says that without the collaboration with laboratories in Spain and France it would not have been possible to document the trajectory.
“The greatest recorded distance traveled by a wolf to date was 1,092 kilometers – between Norway and Finland. Our individual added a walking distance of 100 kilometers,” says Nowak. Wolves are known for traveling long distances, which is a good thing. In this way, various wolf populations come into contact with each other and both genetic isolation and inbreeding can be avoided, Nowak adds.