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Pack tracking through the backcountry of Slovakia is a frustrating business when the howl of the wolf has been drowned out by the roar of the chainsaw.
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WORDS Claire Halliday IMAGES Shannon Morris
I’VE COME TO SLOVAKIA’S Tatra Mountains to track grey wolf and lynx populations. Imagining my first encounter with these intriguing predators had helped take the edge off the long flight from Melbourne but, barely two hours into the first day with the Biosphere Expeditions team who will lead me through this adventure-cum-research project, I’m told that we might not actually see them at all. My fellow travellers – I am the only Australian in a group of 10 whose members hail from the US, the UK, Ireland and Germany – seem just a little crestfallen. Just as quickly, though, disappointment morphs into something different, something much bigger. Let’s call it determined hope. Each of us has travelled a long way for this experience – to join a scientific team collecting data that may help determine the future of these animals. I have come to see a wolf. They have come to see a wolf. Damn it, we’re going to try our hardest to find one. With the awkwardness of strangers on a mass blind date, we’d met at a pub in the unremarkable Slovakian capital, Bratislava. As the beer flowed, introductions were made and we met our fearless leaders: Biosphere’s Expeditions Operations Manager Malika Fettak, and the project’s head scientist Robin Rigg. Quickly I pegged the group as ‘regular’ people – commercial real estate agents, veterinarians, and archaeologists among them. Several have experienced
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Having been dropped into the Tatra Mountains straight from the middle of an Australian summer, the cold Slovakian air feels like a razor blade slicing into my throat each time I inhale. Lactic acid fills my joints, my legs ache and a combination of bitterly cold conditions and physical exertion leaves me struggling for breath. This is the hardest I have pushed my body in a long time but I know I have to keep going. No one else has stopped, despite their own obvious struggles, and I’m not about to be the first. While the climb seems endless, the scarred landscape whispers horror stories in my ear that distract me from my own pain. The range, utterly picturesque in places, is denuded and damaged in others, where intense logging has left a stubble of jagged tree-stumps scratching at the low cloud. Beauty is certainly under threat here, but it’s the survival of a beast that I’m concerned about first and foremost; a creature that howls through the legends of this region and prowls through fairytales read to children everywhere, invariably playing the part of predator and pariah. I’m hunting for wolves.
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adventure travel before, tracking chimpanzee populations in Africa or following bird species across entire continents. They are all here, like me, to step away from their everyday lives and try on, just for size, life as research scientist. By the end of the four-hour train ride to Liptovský Mikuláš the following day, we were strangers no more. Travelling through a country characterised by new business and old architecture, details of disparate lives are shared around, and by the time we clamber into the Biosphere-badged Land Rovers that deliver us to a lodge nestled between the limbs of a snow-covered forest, we have the makings of a team. IF ATTACKED BY A BEAR, don’t run. They can outrun you any day of the week. Instead, lie down on your face with your elbows out – they won’t be able to get to your soft organs as easily. This is one of the house rules that I don’t intend to break. I’m rather attached to my soft organs. Having given us a few instructions on how to avoid disembowelment in the event that we accidently wake a bear from its hibernation, Robin takes us through the project we are here to assist with. Our role is to study the predators of the Tatra Mountains – namely Slovakian wolves and lynxes – to help establish an accurate measure of population numbers. We might not see the animals themselves, but what Robin hopes we do see is evidence that they are around. “Experience has shown that the data volunteers collect in the field is as valuable as the data that scientists collect,” explains Mamika. “The challenge here is that the project takes place during winter in a mountainous area. That makes it tricky.”
At 6.30am, as we’re called into action, we find out what she means. The first task is to learn how to use the equipment Biosphere provide. We’re given plastic bags for collecting faeces, hair, or urine frozen in the snow, and instructed on how to bag samples and log findings. And that’s when the fun really starts. Taking the first snowshoed steps of our trek, faces are knotted with grizzled determination. Everyone is eager to be the first to find a pawprint that may lead to the discovery of a wolf pack lurking in the snow nearby. But trudging uphill for several kilometres in snowshoes isn’t something I’m used to, and before I even glimpse the end of the trail ahead, I start to properly realise that this week will be no holiday.
attack on the pack An estimated 350 wolves continue to run wild in Slovakia. The main threats to this population are illegal hunting and loss of habitat due to clearing of land for agriculture. With a decrease in natural prey, combined with the persecution by farmers protecting their stock, the long-term survival of wolves in this region is under threat. Currently, wolves can be legally shot in Slovakia from 1 November to 15 January. About 100 are killed each year during this time, and an unknown number are killed illegally outside of the official season. Mapping of pack distribution by tracking the movements of wolf (and lynx) populations helps produce a more accurate estimate of total population – results that may affect permitted numbers of future culls.
OUR FIRST DAY PASSES WITH NO SIGHTINGS. Not even a yellow stain of icy wolf wee or a tuft of hair roughly rubbed against a tree branch to tease us. By the next day, there has been a transformation in our group. No longer are we street folk, we’re now apprentice scientists. The technical lingo positively rolls off the tongue: we’re tracking target species, noting GPS coordinates, navigating transects and identifying prey animals by their pad prints alone. But the wolves and lynx remain elusive. When we’re told that even full time researchers often go years without seeing the animal they are studying (despite an amazing amount of hours wandering the forest looking for them), it seems to bring a calm acceptance to some.
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Eight kilometres isn’t much return for a six-hour trek, but my own team is rewarded for its efforts with the discovery of spots of blood in the snow. The droplets are thought to be from a kill by a wolf
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Others hear the news with a kind of frustrated denial. They are going to see wolves. They must. And so, on we look, scouring the snowy undulating mountainscape for signs. And on we walk too, stretching our legs as we strain our eyes. When one of the teams returns to camp with tales of following lynx tracks up and down the side of a steep mountain, relating how they bagged up samples of wolf urine found in snow, the thrill they feel washes over the entire group. Eight kilometres isn’t much return for a six-hour trek, but my own team is rewarded for its efforts with the discovery of spots of blood in the snow. The droplets are thought to be from a kill by a wolf, and as we bag up the evidence and note the coordinates, it is enough to reignite our hope. I feel the joy of impending discovery rising like a heat within my body. However, despite many hours spent stooped over paw prints that I’m sure belong to our sought-after wolf, we finish the day with just the blood-stained snow in our collection box. But it doesn’t seem to really matter. As Alison, Steffan and I trek back through falling snow, we realise we’re utterly lost in the strange blurry white world that the elusive wolves call home. Briefly, our situation adds a different kind of excitement, until the GPS leads us safely back to base. I never do see a wolf, or a lynx – none of us do – but I leave the trip not only a whole lot fitter and with some snowshoeing experience under my belt, but also with the knowledge that I have been involved with something that might at least allow for the possibility that future generations can clap eyes on them. And, when I get back to Australia, at least I’ll know how to protect my soft organs from bear attack…if not from Slovakian beer.
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Biosphere Expeditions Biosphere Expeditions run trips to many parts of the world, where people with a sense of adventure and a love of wilderness can donate their time to collecting scientific data on a variety of species considered to be under threat. The organisation’s Slovakia expedition, tracking grey wolf and lynx populations in the Tatra Mountains, operates during the Slovakian winter each year. For more info visit biosphere-expeditions.org.
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