A female wolf captured in the Jura massif and fitted with a GPS collar as part of a Swiss research project

A second female wolf was captured in the Jura, across the border, in the territory of the Marchairuz pack in the Vaudois Jura and fitted with a radio collar as part of the Swiss research project “Wolves abd Cattle “. A first canine had already been followed by a tag for four months

A second she-wolf has been tracked by GPS since October 30, 2024, on the other side of the border. It was the KORA foundation which announced it. This adult wolf was captured in the Vaudois Jura, in the territory occupied by the Marchairuz pack, one of the five packs today present on the massif in Switzerland and in France.

A team made up of members of the KORA foundation, the Department of Ecology and Evolution of the University of Lausanne, a veterinarian and wildlife-nature police inspectors from the Canton of Vaud, managed to catch the animal using with a rubber jaw trap. The female was quickly put to sleep, time to equip her with a GPS collar, take morphological measurements and collect biological samples. “She was then released at the capture site”specifies KORA in its press release.

This marking is part of the “Wolves and Cattle” project. This research is funded by the KORA foundation and carried out in collaboration with the University of Lausanne, the Canton of Vaud, the Fish and Wildlife Health Institute (FIWI) of the University of Bern, as well as AGRIDEA , an independent resource center which acts in favor of the agricultural and food economy in Switzerland.

“The objective of this project is to deepen scientific knowledge on the relationships between wolves, cattle and horses in order to find solutions for better cohabitation,” assure its promoters.

Since the return of the wolf to Switzerland in the 1990s, in fact, the damage attributed to the predator, like the studies on the wolf, mainly concerned sheep in summer pastures. There is still little scientific data on attacks perpetrated on cattle or equines.

KORA therefore wants to study “the circumstances which favor attacks on cattle and equines in order to identify possible risk areas”. This project should also make it possible to “test the effectiveness of herd protection and scaring measures as well as that of legal shooting” and determine the situations in which all these actions are “most useful”. Researchers finally want to observe “possible changes in behavior of cattle and equines in the presence of wolves”, and know, for example, if animals become “more fearful or aggressive.

In March, a team from KORA, the canton of Vaud and a local veterinarian had already succeeded in capturing and equipping a female from the cross-border Mont Tendre pack with a radio collar. Identified under the code name F186, this wolf was born in the Marchairuz pack between 2019 and 2022.

This GPS collar made it possible to confirm the reproduction of F186 with the breeding male of the pack. Three cubs were observed. But F186 lost its beacon on July 1st. The device was found intact the next day. Four months of data could still be recorded.

A wolf from the canton of Graubünden was also equipped with a GPS transmitter in March 2022. Its collar was found in Hungary in April 2023, its wearer having probably been poached.