The return of the two large carnivores wolf and lynx to the federal state of Lower Saxony, Germany, is accompanied by conflicts, which have to be addressed by comprehensive management strategies. Basis for such management is rigorous monitoring of spatial and temporal occurrence patterns of both species. Currently, there are two different monitoring approaches executed in Lower Saxony: the official one, established with the sp...

After having been extinct for approximately 200 years, the Eurasian lynx ( Lynx lynx ) is currently being reintroduced in several European countries. However, it still occurs in several local, isolated populations. Given the patchy distribution of its forest habitat within a human-dominated landscape, the formation of population stepping-stones, i.e., small lynx occurrences between source populations, has been suggested an imp...

Large carnivores have made a successful comeback across human-dominated landscapes in Central Europe. The Eurasian lynx, for instance, has been actively reintroduced in different regions. Genetic diversity is quickly eroding in these isolated, small populations, questioning the long-term success of lynx reintroductions. To track population development and genetic diversity in a reintroduced lynx population, we used microsatell...