Thursday 20th June

A very short walk from the forester’s bunk house and I arrive at the offices of the Harz Mountains National Park. Ole, Lilli and I share a lovely breakfast together and then it’s down to work but not before a high priority situation has to be dealt with. M9’s collar is transmitting a mortality event. This happens when a lynx stops moving for a period of 24 hours. It can also happen because the collar has simply reached the end of its lifespan and dropped off but this was not the case for M9.

M9 was a young male lynx who had a history of getting himself into trouble and both Ole and Lilli were not surprised by this turn of events. However, due to this unfortunate situation, I find out that it’s not that simple to go and investigate, find and collect the body of a dead lynx. In Germany the lynx is listed under both hunting and conservation legislation, so if a lynx dies you simply can’t go and pick it up, it’s the property of whoever has the hunting rights in the area, so they have to be contacted first.

Contact is fairly swiftly made and the lynx is quickly found under an old, unused building very close to the road. M9’s body is swiftly transported for necropsy.

We then start talking through the lynx situation in the Harz Mountains. The Harz Mountains National Park, unlike the other sites and projects I’ve visited so far is dominated by conifers. It covers an area of 2,200km² , at its lowest point, has an elevation of 200 metres and at its highest point, the Brocken – the mountain of the witches, has an elevation of 1,141 metres. It’s 100km from the furthest point in the Northwest to the furthest point in the Southeast but it takes two hours to drive through by car.

The average territory size of male lynx in the area is 309km² (37-1,305km² ), the average territory size of female lynx in the area is 123km² (29-262km² ).

The lynx reintroduction programme in the Harz Mountains ran from 2000-2006 and was a partnership between the hunting association of Lower Saxony and the Federal State of Lower Saxony. The National Park joined when it became a National Park and two other Federal States joined later; Saxony Anhalt and Thuringia.

Twenty four lynx were released in total between 2000-2006, nine males and fifteen females. All of the lynx released into the Harz Mountains were captive bred animals, mostly from German facilities, the rest were from Swedish facilities.

This particular project has been seen as controversial and it still causes some debate now. However, in the 1990’s for political reasons, it was decided to release zoo bred animals, these were seen to be less valuable than wild caught individuals. If the worst case scenario happened and they died, no animals had been taken, wild caught, from the Carpathian lynx stock.

All of the animals were individually soft released and were not trained to kill. After initial observations in small enclosures, they were placed in 100m² enclosures and then moved to a 4 ha enclosure (the release enclosure) where they were hardly ever observed. After, a few weeks the door was opened and they could go, food was offered at the enclosure but it was never taken.

All animals were very closely observed, especially in the smaller enclosures to ensure they hadn’t become too habituated to humans. A few were and were sent back to their zoo’s of origin and two were recaptured after release.

The animals were not collared in the early years as the funding for the project originally came from the hunting association of Lower Saxony and they wanted to ensure acceptance across the hunting community. If the animals had been collared this would have been viewed as an academic exercise.

The first reproduction event happened in 2001 and camera trapping started in 2001, opportunistically at first as the technology available then was limited. Between 2010-2012, more technically robust camera trapping technology became available for lynx monitoring and in 2015 camera trapping commenced systematically within the Harz Mountains. Four years into the programme there are sixty camera locations, with two cameras placed at each location over 750km² . They are equally spaced to try to calculate density. Camera trapping takes place August-January.

However, opportunistic camera trapping still occurs i.e. at kill sites and monitoring occasionally occurs outside the Harz Mountains if there have been signs of reproduction, to check on females and young.

Lynx first started to be collared in 2008, most were ear tagged as well. Lynx are occasionally still ear tagged if they are too light to collar or if they need to keep an eye on certain individuals. The collars differ from other ones I’ve seen so far, these are also designed to drop off independently but a small explosion in the device causes it to drop off, harmless to the lynx of course.

The SCALP (Status and Conservation of the Alpine Lynx Population) criteria is used to distinguish between verified and unverified lynx reports, as is the case with many lynx projects;

• C1 – Dead or captured animals, photo’s, genetic evidence.
• C2 – Prey remains, tracks, proved by experts.
• C3 – Sightings, unproved tracks, prey remains, scats

Only C1 and C2 are used to map the species.

There has only been one known case of illegal killing in the Harz, other causes of death have included;

• Road traffic accident, train collisions.
• Sarcoptic mange.
• Drowning (young animals).
• Getting caught in fences.
• Other natural causes (wide ranging)

The National Park has a lynx show enclosure, which was built at the same time as the release enclosures as the Park came under pressure from the media, members of the public and others to see the animals.

Two enclosures were built, one of 1000m² and one of 1500m² . Currently, they house four animals, two sisters in one and a male and female in the other. The enclosures have been a great success and are a popular tourist attraction. Up to 300 people have been recorded at the enclosure site at the height of the tourist season. The attraction financially has been of more benefit to the local economy of Bad Harzburg, which calls itself the city of the lynx and local businesses than the National Park. The National Park doesn’t charge entrance fees and any benefits come from occasional opportunities i.e. the lynx are often used by the media, businesses use the lynx as a symbol to sell their products. The lynx coffee company below donates 50 cents to the National Park for every packet of coffee sold.

The National Park produces an annual calendar, which is based on a photographic competition. The photographs cover a range of categories but have to be of local species or habitats, winning entrants make up the monthly photographs within the calendar. Money from the sale of the calendar goes to the National Park.

There are symbols, statues of the lynx everywhere in Bad Harzburg and within the Park itself is a statue to the last killed (shot) lynx in the National Park. This happened in 1818.

The Park used to run a ‘Lynx Ticket’ event, where members of the public would pay to visit the show enclosure, listen to a talk about the project and watch the animals being fed. They would also visit the historic site of the Harzburg Castle via the Burgberg cable car. However, the event ended up not being financially viable for the park and it was stopped. Though feeding events and talks at the enclosure are still very popular with members of the public.

The costs of the lynx project are mostly covered by the Federal State, which supports the National Park with extra money being set aside for the lynx project itself.

The National Park operates a compensation scheme for any livestock that are killed by lynx. Owners are fully compensated for the loss of any livestock, costs paid out have varied between €100 – €4000 per year.

Landowners, foresters and others receive payments of €50 for reports of lynx sightings, photo’s and video’s as a thank you for your help.

So, with that we jump into the pickup truck and visit the site of the former soft release enclosures and the statue to the last killed lynx in the Harz Mountains.

So, was this the end of day 1 in the Harz – no! At, midday another call came into the office of a possible roe deer lynx kill. Photographs had been sent to the office and chats to the local hunter had taken place. He’d taken swabs and other material to use for DNA analysis. After, a long debate as it was not a clear cut case, the decision was made to visit the site and to try to catch and collar the animal if it was a lynx kill, as it wasn’t one of the collared lynx as they weren’t in the area. So, we set off with the lynx trap to drive towards Berlin! Having, met the hunter, we set about constructing the box trap with the roe deer carcass inside as bait and set up a camera trap.

We then drove away from the area, had some food and waited for a message to be sent from the trap to Ole’s mobile, that the trap door had closed. After, several hours we gave up, both Ole and Lilli had been very sceptical about catching a lynx at this site, ‘as it didn’t feel quite right’. However, the samples will still be sent off for DNA analysis. With, that we drove back to Oderhaus exhausted, another very long day but with very great experiences.

Friday 21st June

Feeling sleepy we all meet up at the offices and head out to pick up Ike, who is helping the National Park organise a lynx meeting next year to celebrate twenty years of the lynx reintroduction project. We spend part of the morning visiting the venue, that will host the event and the hotel where the speakers will stay in Bad Harzburg. After lunch, Ole, Lilli and I visit the show enclosure.

From here we move on to the Burgberg Cable Car to get to the historic hilltop site of the ruins of Harzburg Castle. From here you can get a good overview of how the lynx are using the Harz Mountains landscape. In order to disperse and leave the Harz Mountains the lynx have to cross a highly fragmented landscape. Ole and Lilli researched how lynx left the Harz Mountains, investigating the permeability of motorway crossing structures. They found that 29 out of 230 underpasses and one landscape bridge provided good connectivity to allow movement through the landscape. The research also highlighted lynx mortality hotspots and areas where the species found it difficult to cross due to roads, other infrastructure, fragmentation of habitat and urbanisation (Anders et al, 2016).

From our viewing point you could spot both the opportunities and difficulties that the lynx might have dispersing through the landscape.

Saturday 22nd June

Both Ole and Lilli give up their day off to show me more of the Harz Mountains.

We set off in the pickup truck with three potential lynx kill sites to visit from data derived from the collars. Usefully, Ole’s dog, Malu accompanies us. Having a dog along for such visits makes the prospect of finding a kill site much more likely. The first location is a short walk from a forest road, into an area of regenerating conifers. There’s not much left (other animals have also been feasting on the remains) and Malu is the first to find it, a couple of leg bones and cleats from what appears to be the remains of a red deer calf.

We then visit the Achtermann, the third highest mountain in Lower Saxony and the fourth in the Harz Mountains. From this point you can view how lynx may be crossing the Harz Mountains in the Eastern part of the area and I can look across to my final trip stop. See also earlier photographs of the view across to Brocken.

At this point Lilli has to leave us but Ole and I carry on to the next kill site, this site is much deeper into regenerating spruce habitat and more difficult to reach. Malu isn’t too happy to have to walk through the bramble either but her mood picks up when she locates the remains of what’s left of another red deer calf.

The regenerating spruce and photo’s you may have noticed from previous sites, with brown, dead and dying spruce on them are due to bark beetle infestation. As, with other sites, the Harz Mountains National Park is undertaking a replanting scheme with broadleaved tree species. Though, the ‘natural’ regeneration of spruce happens quite quickly.

We move on to the final kill site, that we can’t get to. Armed with our radio-tracking device and with Malu safely stowed in the pickup truck, we know that the male lynx is somewhere probably only 100 metres below us with his supper so we can go no further. We leave him to his meal.

Then it’s off back to the bunkhouse, the lynx part of my travels in Germany have ended, though the wildcat part continues!

Sunday 23rd June

I set off in the early afternoon from the bunkhouse to drive to Malte Gotz and Saskia Jerosch’s house in the Eastern part of the Harz. I am armed with maps and directions from Ole and Malte and Saskia know roughly when to expect me. I follow google maps and identify the landmarks and towns pointed out to me. After an hour and a quarter I pull onto the forest road and arrive at Malte and Saskia’s house. Phew!

I drop off my belongings in the guest house and happily guzzle some Apelschorle, a spritzy apple juice I’ve become quite fond of. Rehydrated we (Me, Malte, Saskia, their three children and the family dog Pella, now 16!) set off for a walk through part of Malte’s research area, which is next to the house. The house is next to a mixed, beech dominated woodland surrounded by agricultural pasture, small streams and woodland patches. We look at likely den sites and I’m shown a box trap for wildcats, which has been used to trap and monitor the species, using valerian as the bait and similar collars were then attached to the wildcats as previously shown to monitor activity.

Malte and Saskia are keen to point out the linear woodland edges, which the males in particular like to follow and throughout my visit both Malte and Saskia make it clear, that although in their studies wildcats seem to be using more open landscapes, a richly structured landscape with connecting features is important. The quality of the micro-habitat in particular is extremely important, there has to be a sufficient amount for the females to raise their young.

After a lovely meal and once the children have gone to bed, we get down to talking wildcats.

Malte discusses his study, which took place between 2004-2008, in the Eastern part of the Harz Mountains, in Sudharz and Saskia talks through her study (2010-2013), in the Southern part of the Harz Mountains in the Golden Aue, near the border to Thuringea.

In Malte’s study area male home ranges were 1,500 – 3,000 ha’s, female home ranges were 700 – 1,200 ha’s. He found that female home ranges didn’t overlap and features such as forestry roads and streams often marked the boundary of territories. Whereas, male home ranges did overlap.

Malte’s study focused on the reproductive behaviour of female wildcats. A good resource of resting sites and den sites, which are undisturbed are necessary for females to raise their young, although these can be found in intensively managed areas. Females use a wide variety of sites, which include;

• Brash piles from forestry operations.
• Root plates (upturned), old stumps with cavities underneath.
• Tree cavities.
• Dens of other species e.g. fox, badger.
• Rocky areas.
• Dense scrub, shrubby areas.
• Hay stacks.
• Log piles (stacked after felling operations)

Malte found that wildcats can climb up to 10 metres to gain access to cavities within trees.

Although, wildcat diet was highly variable and included; bank vole, field vole, water vole, wood mouse, yellow-necked mouse, brown rat, brown hare, birds, crickets, shrews and reptiles, 75% of adult wildcat diet is made up of the ‘vole’ component i.e. water, bank and field vole.

After five weeks the females begin to move their young to other den sites, which they change often, every 3-4 days. The survival rate of the kittens is poor, only 25% and male cats display the same behaviour as that observed in male lions. They will commit infanticide, they will kill any kittens that are not their own. So, there have to be strategies for survival i.e. reproducing for a long time. The females are known to have had young up to 12 years old and they also reproduce at different times throughout the year.

There are several anthropogenic threats to survival, aside from natural threats from predation i.e. from foxes and pine martens. These include;

• Road mortality – males killed more often
• Illegal killing – not common
• Getting caught in fencing
• Forestry operations
• Bycatch – caught in snares set for other species

A growing cause of death is from forestry operations i.e. when stacked, felled logs are moved from site or chipped on site. There is no checking for wildcats before the wood is moved and this practice is known to have caused the death of whole wildcat families. The growing interest of wood chips as a source of fuel has increased the risk of harm.

A wildcat SCALP criteria is used to distinguish between verified and unverified wildcat reports.

• C1 – Genetic evidence, length of intestine.
• C2 – Phenotype – minimum of two typical marks, dead or live animals, only conducted by experts who regularly undertake this work.
• C3 – Observations, photo’s of poor quality.
• H1 – Hybrids – only genetics used.

C1 and C2 are used for mapping the species and newly, identified wildcat areas are fitting the habitat model developed by Nina Klar (Klar et al, 2012).

We, then move on to discussing Saskia’s research in the Golden Aue, which was undertaken in richly structured agricultural landscape. The habitat was over 70% dominated by agricultural interests i.e. semi-improved pasture, unimproved grassland and arable crops. The rest was made up of woodland, unmanaged scrub, settlements and other infrastructure.

Eleven wildcats were radio-collared, five males and six females. Female home ranges overlapped but their core areas did not. Female home ranges were smaller in these agricultural habitats than within woodland due to the prey density available. Females tended to stay in sheltered areas with a high percentage of cover. They were more restricted to aerial shelter and avoided roads. Males used linear structures to move through the landscape and used open areas with good vegetation cover. Wildcats, wouldn’t walk through maize crops, however, they would quickly move into newly harvested maize fields to catch prey. Males used 1,200 ha’s in both open and woodland areas, females used 500 ha’s in woodland areas and roughly half of this 200-300 ha’s in open landscapes. No domestic cats were recorded in the wildcat study area throughout the study period.

Monday 24th June

My birthday and what a way to spend it! Out on field visits to Malte and Saskia’s study sites. Though before we start out, the German hospitality and kindness continues and I’m presented with a box of chocolates and warm wishes.

We start off in a managed broadleaved woodland and pass several stacked log piles. Malte and Saskia point out potential den sites within the woodland and we make our way to a rocky outcrop area, very similar to the bunker area I saw with Sabrina earlier in my trip. Here, I get shown a previously used den site, where Malte found a mother and her kittens, that formed part of his studies.

From here we move to a richly structured site, comprised of low input pasture bounded by broadleaved woodland with a stream running through it. Of particular interest within this site are the old mine shafts. The site contains a number of grilled mine shafts from copper and lead mining activities, which have been used by wildcat mothers to raise their kittens in. These sites are of course very well protected from predators.

We also visit an old crack willow tree that had been used as a den site. Malte and Saskia are disappointed that the old tree is now not as it used to be and maybe will no longer offer the same opportunities for a mother to raise her young. However, I think you’ll get an idea of what it used to look like from these photo’s.

We drive on to Saskia’s research area in the Golden Aue, whilst this area is certainly far more agricultural, in a landscape dominated by pasture and arable crops, it still contains patches of woodland and largely impenetrable (if you are human) areas of scrub. The quality of these micro habitats and connecting features, ‘wildlife corridors’, is as I learnt yesterday but can clearly see today, a significant factor to the success of the species in this area.

We move on to take a look at a culvert, with ledges often used by wildcats in the area, essentially a similar design we use for otter ledges.

We also take a look at barrier fencing put up to stop wildcats getting killed on the main highway.

Finally, we take a drive to a main road with barrier fencing and underpasses designed to prevent wildcats being killed on this section of road. It had been identified as an area of high wildcat mortality by Malte and Saskia and it’s clear why wildcats were being killed. It’s a clear wildlife corridor, broadleaved woodland on either side immediately adjacent to fields.

The underpasses are very well used, not just by wildcats. We collect the SD cards from the camera traps and take a look at what’s on them, as well as whose been using the lure stick, species recorded were;

• Wildcat – attracted to the lure stick.
• Lynx
• Pine marten – attracted to the lure stick.
• Badger
• Fox
• Racoon

We return to Malte and Saskia’s house and I see my first Roe Deer of the trip waiting to cross the road.

A chorus of Happy Birthday is sung to me, started off by Malte and Saskia’s daughter and everyone joins in. After, yet another lovely meal we walk up to the top of the forest road, for a couple of sundowners.

A truly memorable birthday and with that the wildlife part of my trip was over!