News

April 2021: Young lynx from Reinhardswald now in Neu-Eichenberg
Until summer 2020, we regularly detected two young lynx in the ca. 200 km² Reinhardswald in northern Hesse. Together with their mother and at least one sibling, they immigrated into Reinhardswald by crossing the Weser River in autumn 2019 at the age of only 5-6 months. After the lynx family had disappeared from Reinhardswald in summer 2020, we rediscovered one of the youngsters approximately 25 km east of Reinhardswald in the area of Neu Eichenberg. Already in December 2020 a hunter was able to film a lynx in this area using his thermal imagery camera. The sex of the lynx is yet unknown.


Lynx B1099x in Reinhardswald (left panel) and near Neu Eichenberg (right panel)

Third reproduction of lynx in northern Thuringia
In north-west Thuringia, we detected another female lynx with offspring. It is already the third female with offspring detected in our ongoing study with the Friends of the Earth Germany (BUND Thüringen). This lynx family was detected in a fragmented forest area south of the source population in the Harz mountains, which is not considered a typical lynx habitat.


Lynx B1094w (right panel) and her offspring (left panel).

March 2021: Two wolves in northern Hesse
In February 2021, one of our cameras took an image of a wolf near the village of Niederellenbach, Northern Hesse. The image was taken at the southern edge of the known home range of female wolf GW1409f. Two months before, a male wolf (GW1939m) was detected close to the camera trapping site by means of genetic sampling. Also in February, a private camera trap in the same area took an image of two wolves together. This was the first evidence of two wolves ranging together in northern Hesse since the return of the species into the area in 2015.
It is not possible to discern whether the individuals shown on the photo are wolves GW1409f and/ or GW1939m. It is also not possible to determine the age or sex of the individuals shown.


Wolf near Niederellenbach. Photo taken on 05 February 2021. © Uni Göttingen/ HLNUG

February 2020: Lynx in the snow
These two lynx are enjoying the snow in the Harz Mountains (Thuringia). The individuals shown are likely offspring of female lynx B1042w.


Taken January 2021 at Stiftforstbetrieb Ilfeld (Klosterforsten Management GmbH), this photo most likely shows two offspring of lynx B1042w. This individual also had cubs in the Thuringian part of Harz mountain.

January 2021: North-West Thuringia: An Eldorado for the endangered European wildcat
In December 2020, Marleen Hölscher submitted her Bachelor’s Thesis, in which she studied the distribution and abundance of the endangered European wildcat (Felis silvestris silvestris) in North-West Thuriniga (central Germany). Marleen examined 214 wildcat images taken across 43 camera trapping sites during the first four month of an ongoing study carried out in cooperation with the BUND Thuringia. A large proportion of photos was taken in the fragmented forests south of the Harz Mountains. In this area, 9.98 wildcat detections occurred across a standardized sampling period of 100 trapping days. This is the highest photographic capture rate ever recorded for the European wildcat. It is yet unclear, however, why wildcats appear to be so abundant in the fragmented forests of North-West Thuringia.


Wildcat, camera trapped in September 2020 in Thuringian part of Eichsfeld.