Effects of migration and selective harvest for the genetic status of the Scandinavian wolf population

The Swedish Environment Protection Agency commissions to the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, through concerned experts at the Grimsö Wildlife Research Station to investigate the possibilities to direct a selective harvest in the Swedish wolf population towards packs with the lowest genetic value for the population, and to calculate the effects on the average inbreeding level in the population by such a selective harvest. The commission also includes an analysis of the possibilities to speed up this improvement of the inbreeding situation, including whether this can be achieved by initially keeping the population at a lower level, while other action are performed to assist this process (i.e. active translocation of unrelated wolves to the population). The mission shall be performed after consultations with other relevant research institutes. In accordance with our comprehension of the mission, we have in this report estimated the changes in genetic status (inbreeding coefficient and/or relatedness coefficient) of the Scandinavian wolf population under different harvest strategies (random harvest vs. selective harvest directed towards wolf packs/pairs with low genetics status) under different immigration rates and at different population sizes. After an additional request from SEPA we have divided the work in two parts, short term effects after the first two years of a selective harvest, and long term effects where we used a time horizon of 100 and 300 years respectively