25 and 26 April 2007

Revising the Wolf and the Lynx Management Plans for Croatia

Workshops for the revision of Croatia's wolf and lynx management plans were held in the hall of the Ivan Hotel in the Solaris Hotel Complex in Šibenik on 25 and 26 April 2007.

Given the fact that management plans contain a list of activities to be undertaken for the purpose of a long-term conservation of these strictly protected species in an as harmonious coexistence with humans as possible, they were conceived as dynamic documents that follow changes in time and space and the success and purposefulness of individual actions, at the same time bringing the activities in line with new sets of knowledge.
In this regard the first revision was planned to be made two years after their adoption, i.e. early in 2007.

The workshops for the management plan revisions, as well as those intended for the formulation of plans, were attended by the representatives of all stakeholder groups and the colleagues from Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina that share the population with Croatia. After evaluation of the existing management plans and their implementation the participants worked on identification of key problems and possibilities of their resolution. The impossibility to carry out interventions in the wolf population proved to be the most serious problem, while the lack of coordination between the hunting management basic documents and the conservation of strictly protected predators on one and the shortage of scientific data on the size of prey populations on the other side were recognized as major problems. Besides, some new issues emerged that are to be tackled more in the future, such as detaching strictly protected large predators from the wild and keeping them in captivity.