Findings of fossil remains of wolves in Slovenia are abundant, and date from different historical periods. The best known sites are Županov spodmol near Sajevče, Potočka zijalka, Postojna Cave, Mokrica Cave, Črni kal above Koper, and many others (Rakovec 1975). The oldest remains date from the Riss-Würm interglacial stage, about 100,000 to 90,000 ago. Remains of wolves dating from the Roman period have also been found, during the excavation of Emona in Mirje near Ljubljana.

Legal status of the wolf throughout the history and till today

Historically, Slovenia was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire for almost 200 years, whose hunting laws systematically drove out large carnivores from its territory from the mid-18^thcentury onwards. As a result, the lynx was completely exterminated at the end of the 19^thcentury or beginning of the 20^th, and both the wolf and the bear came close to extermination (Schollmayer 1889; Šivic 1926).

Payment of bounties for the killing of predators was standard practice in the 19th century. The legislation of the time divided game into three groups. Game which was out of hunting season could only be raised, hunted, and claimed by the landowner and those to whom he gave permission. Roe deer, red deer, chamois and other herbivore species, and forest-dwelling game birds and ducks all belonged in this category. Tenant farmers were allowed to drive away and kill game causing losses to their crops, but could not use guns to do so, and the killed animal had to be given to the landowner. Animals such as the wild boar, fox, pine marten, birds of prey, owl, gull, and tern belonged in this category. Large carnivores could be killed by any landowner or tenant, at any time and any place, but using a firearm only if the landowner allowed it. Bounties were offered for many of these animals in the last category, and to claim it the hunter had to show the skin, head, or at least paw of the animal.

It should be emphasized that this occurred exclusively due to persecution by humans and not due to a deterioration in natural conditions, since the bulk of the Dinaric forests in which these animals are most numerous today (Southern Slovenia) were poorly utilized and hence largely undisturbed by humans (Hufnagl 1898). Data by decades on the numbers of killed wolves in Lower Carniola (Dolenjska) show that these numbers decreased steadily, from several dozen to just a few. At the beginning of the 19^th century wolves in Kočevje still maintained a constant presence, but after 1880 they made only occasional appearances, such that by the end of the 19^th century bounties were no longer offered by the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Wolves made a recovery by the end of the First World War but as early as 1923 the “Council for the Slaughter of Wolves” was established in Kočevje, whose membership was made up largely of professional hunters. Thus the wolf became a rare species even in the heart of its core territorial location—in the central Dinaric part of present-day Slovenia. According to data on slaughtered wolves between 1910 and 1981 published in the magazine “Lovec” (“Hunter”), the number of killed wolves was greatest where they were most likely most abundant—in Inner Carniola (Notranjska) in the vicinity of Snežnik and in Kočevje, with isolated instances between Vrhnika and Cerknica, on Pohorje, Boč, Pokljuka, near Vodice in the vicinity of Ljubljana, and so on.

The first indications of greater awareness among people occurred in 1973, when bounties stopped being paid for the slaughter of wolves. Initiatives for the protection of wolves within a certain territory followed, first in 1974, in the breeding and hunting grounds of Medved Kočevje, and then in 1976 in the breeding and hunting grounds of Jelen Snežnik. But only in 1976, when the Law on the Protection, Breeding, and Hunting of Wildlife and Management of Hunting Grounds was passed, which is still in effect in Slovenia today, was a hunting season designated for the wolf for the first time, and along with this protected status during its most vulnerable season, the time of whelping and raising of pups. In 1990 the wolf was protected throughout the entire year by the umbrella hunting organization, the Hunters Association of Slovenia, which defined the terms of this protection in writing the following year (1991) in the publication Breeding Guidelines for Big Game. Approximately twenty years after the first unofficial protection of wolves in Slovenia, the state followed suit on the national level in 1993 with the Decree on the Protection of Threatened Species (Official Gazette RS, no. 57/93), and listed the wolf as a protected species the year round. Thus today the wolf in Slovenia is protected all year and is on the list of rare and threatened animal species. The ministry responsible, based on population data, sightings and the number of wolves culled in the previous period, as well as based on damage to livestock and other data, can approve the exceptional shooting of a predetermined number of animals. Culling is restricted to a given time period and is spatially distributed across regions. The decision is issued for each year separately.

Reference:

Jonozovič, M. 2003. Volk (Canis lupus). Strokovno izhodišče za vzpostavljanje omrežja Natura 2000, Ljubljana, 20 str.