phaidra.vetmeduni.ac.at o:2576 DOI 10.3390/ani13223551 Transboundary Monitoring of the Wolf Alpine Population over 21 Years and Seven Countries Wolves have large spatial requirements and their expansion in Europe is occurring over national boundaries, hence the need to develop monitoring programs at the population level. Wolves in the Alps are defined as a functional population and management unit. The range of this wolf Alpine population now covers seven countries: Italy, France, Austria, Switzerland, Slovenia, Liechtenstein and Germany, making the development of a joint and coordinated monitoring program particularly challenging. In the framework of the Wolf Alpine Group (WAG), researchers developed uniform criteria for the assessment and interpretation of field data collected in the frame of different national monitoring programs. This standardization allowed for data comparability across borders and the joint evaluation of distribution and consistency at the population level. We documented the increase in the number of wolf reproductive units (packs and pairs) over 21 years, from 1 in 1993-1994 up to 243 units in 2020-2021, and examined the pattern of expansion over the Alps. This long-term and large-scale approach is a successful example of transboundary monitoring of a large carnivore population that, despite administrative fragmentation, provides robust indexes of population size and distribution that are of relevance for wolf conservation and management at the transnational Alpine scale. eng Long-Distance Dispersal; Canis-Lupus; Estimating Abundance; Conservation; Dynamics; Wolves; Apennines; Recovery; Wildlife 2024-02-20T10:42:18.493Z LOMv1.0 Author BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Marucco;Francesca; FN:Francesca Marucco X-ORCID:https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1390-6106 END:VCARD BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Duchamp;Christophe; FN:Christophe Duchamp END:VCARD BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Chapron;Guillaume; FN:Guillaume Chapron X-ORCID:https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6727-1070 END:VCARD BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Knauer;Felix; FN:Felix Knauer END:VCARD BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Walter;Theresa; FN:Theresa Walter END:VCARD BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Rauer;Georg; FN:Georg Rauer END:VCARD BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Černe;Rok; FN:Rok Černe X-ORCID:https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4111-4066 END:VCARD BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Potočnik;Hubert; FN:Hubert Potočnik X-ORCID:https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8189-1057 END:VCARD BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Manz;Ralph; FN:Ralph Manz END:VCARD BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Zimmermann;Fridolin; FN:Fridolin Zimmermann X-ORCID:https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3861-246X END:VCARD BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Reinhardt;Ilka; FN:Ilka Reinhardt X-ORCID:https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4314-3362 END:VCARD BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Avanzinelli;Elisa; FN:Elisa Avanzinelli X-ORCID:https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4666-2304 END:VCARD https://w3id.org/kim/hcrt/scheme https://w3id.org/kim/hcrt/text Textdokument Text LOMv1.0 yes https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 application/pdf 1394387 https://phaidra.vetmeduni.ac.at/o:2576 https://phaidra.vetmeduni.ac.at/api/object/o:2576/thumbnail LOMv1.0 discipline