Fridolin Zimmermann

• PhD
• KORA - Carnivore Ecology and Wildlife Management

The conservation of large carnivores is a formidable challenge for biodiversity conservation. Using a data set on the past and current status of brown bears (Ursus arctos), Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx), gray wolves (Canis lupus), and wolverines (Gulo gulo) in European countries, we show that roughly one-third of mainland Europe hosts at least one larg...

Scent-marking is widespread among mammals and has been observed in many felid species. Although the behaviour is well-described, little is known about its function in wild felid populations. We investigated patterns of scent-marking and its role in intra- and intersexual communication among resident and non-resident Eurasian lynx Lynx lynx by obser...

We studied the influence of surveyed area size on density estimates by means of camera-trapping in a low-density felid population (1-2 individuals/100 km(2) ). We applied non-spatial capture-recapture (CR) and spatial CR (SCR) models for Eurasian lynx during winter 2005/2006 in the northwestern Swiss Alps by sampling an area divided into 5 nested p...

Automatically triggered cameras taking photographs or videos of passing animals (camera traps) have emerged over the last decade as one of the most powerful tool for wildlife research. In parallel, a wealth of camera trap systems and models has become commercially available, a phenomenon mainly driven by the increased use of camera traps by sport h...

For conservation or management programs, basic data on vital rates are important but often hard to acquire for long‐lived and elusive wildlife species such as large carnivores. In this study, we analyzed long‐term changes in survival rates for different sexes and age classes (juvenile, subadult, adult) in three reintroduced Swiss lynx populations (...

Understanding predator-prey interactions is crucial for wildlife management and human-wildlife coexistence, particularly in multi-use landscapes such as Western Europe. As wolves (Canis lupus) recolonize their former habitats, knowledge of their diet is essential for conservation planning and public acceptance. However, data of such regions is so f...

Distribution of lynx in eleven European countries.

Survival and cause‐specific mortality rates are vital for evidence‐based population forecasting and conservation, particularly for large carnivores, whose populations are often vulnerable to human‐caused mortalities. It is therefore important to know the relationship between anthropogenic and natural mortality causes to evaluate whether they are ad...

Le 18 mars 2022, Mme Barbara Pompili, ministre de la Transition écologique, et Mme Bérangère Abba, secrétaire d’État chargée de la biodiversité, ont saisi conjointement le Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle (MNHN) et l’Office français de la biodiversité (OFB) pour la réalisation d’une expertise scientifique collective et technique (ci-après l’ESC...

Le 18 mars 2022, Mme Barbara Pompili, ministre de la Transition écologique, et Mme Bérangère Abba, secrétaire d’État chargée de la biodiversité, ont saisi conjointement le Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle (MNHN) et l’Office français de la biodiversité (OFB) pour la réalisation d’une expertise scientifique collective et technique (ci-après l’ESC...

Le 18 mars 2022, Mme Barbara Pompili, ministre de la Transition écologique, et Mme Bérangère Abba, secrétaire d’État chargée de la biodiversité, ont saisi conjointement le Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle (MNHN) et l’Office français de la biodiversité (OFB) pour la réalisation d’une expertise scientifique collective et technique (ci-après l’ESC...

En mars 2022, la ministre de la Transition écologique et de la Cohésion des territoires et la secrétaire d’État chargée de la Biodiversité ont conjointement saisi le Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle (MNHN) et l’Office français de la biodiversité (OFB) pour réaliser une expertise scientifique collective visant à définir les « conditions de viabi...

Large carnivore conservation in human-dominated landscapes is a complex issue, often marked by the stark contrast between those who hold deep-rooted animosity towards these animals and those who welcome their presence. The survival of the Eurasian lynx Lynx lynx in Europe relies on effective coexistence with humans in multi-use areas. We explored t...

The report Large carnivore distribution maps and population updates 2017 – 2022/23 is based on the latest information and provides the best available overview of brown bear (Ursus arctos), Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx), wolf (Canis lupus), golden jackal (Canis aureus), and wolverine (Gulo gulo) distributions and population sizes at a European continent...

Rehabilitation of injured or immature individuals has become an increasingly used conservation and management tool. However, scientific evaluation of rehabilitations is rare, raising concern about post-release welfare as well as the cost-effectiveness of spending scarce financial resources. Over the past 20 years, events of juvenile Eurasian lynx p...

Camera trapping has revolutionized wildlife ecology and conservation by providing automated data acquisition, leading to the accumulation of massive amounts of camera trap data worldwide. Although management and processing of camera trap‐derived Big Data are becoming increasingly solvable with the help of scalable cyber‐infrastructures, harmonizati...

Simple Summary We conducted a transboundary assessment of the Alpine wolf population over 21 years and across seven countries: Italy, France, Austria, Switzerland, Slovenia, Liechtenstein and Germany. This comprehensive study aimed to elucidate the new population expansion of wolves within the Alpine region after extinction in the area, with an inc...

Aim: The increasing availability of animal tracking datasets collected across many sites provides new opportunities to move beyond local assessments to enable detailed and consistent habitat mapping at biogeographical scales. However, integrating wildlife datasets across large areas and study sites is challenging, as species' varying responses to d...

Camera trapping has revolutionized wildlife ecology and conservation by providing automated data acquisition, leading to the accumulation of massive amounts of camera trap data worldwide. Although management and processing of camera trap-derived Big Data are becoming increasingly solvable with the help of scalable cyber-infrastructures, harmonizati...

Wolf populations are recovering and expanding across Europe, causing conflicts with livestock owners. Here we compiled incident-based livestock damage data across 21 countries for the years 2018, 2019 and 2020, during which 39,262 wolf-caused incidents were reported from 470 administrative regions. We found substantial regional variation in all asp...

Context Adjustments in habitat use by large carnivores can be a key factor facilitating their coexistence with people in shared landscapes. Landscape composition might be a key factor determining how large carnivores can adapt to occurring alongside humans, yet broad-scale analyses investigating adjustments of habitat use across large gradients of...

Wildlife conservation and management need accurate methods for population survey and monitoring. Absolute counts of roe deer populations (Capreolus capreolus) are not possible, but the rapid advancement of motion‐sensitive camera technologies and new analytical approaches might potentially lead to more precise estimates at lower costs compared to t...

The ecology and evolution of reproductive timing and synchrony has been a topic of great interest in evolutionary ecology for decades. Originally motivated by questions related to behavioural and reproductive adaptation to environmental conditions, the topic has acquired new relevance in the face of climate change. However, there has been relativel...

Wolf populations are recovering and expanding across Europe, causing conflicts with livestock owners. To mitigate these conflicts and reduce livestock damages, authorities spend considerable resources to compensate damages, support damage prevention measures, and manage wolf populations. However, the effectiveness of these measures remains largely...

ContextBehavioral adjustments by large carnivores can be a key factor facilitating their coexistence with people in shared landscapes. Landscape composition might be a key factor determining how large carnivores can adapt to occurring alongside humans, yet broad-scale analyses investigating adjustments of habitat use across large gradients of human...

Monitoring standards and strategy to optimise the integrated monitoring of the status of the wolf alpine population. On behalf of the LIFE WolfAlps project

Regular assessments of species’ status are an essential component of conservation planning and adaptive management. They allow the progress of past or ongoing conservation actions to be evaluated and can be used to redirect and prioritise future conservation actions. Most countries perform periodic assessments for their own national adaptive manage...

Abstract When wild‐caught Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx) from the Slovak Carpathian Mountains were reintroduced to Central Switzerland in the early 1970s and spread through the north‐western Swiss Alps (NWA), they faced a largely unfamiliar landscape with strongly fragmented forests, high elevations, and intense human land use. For more than 30 years, r...

Habitat selection is a multi-scale process driven by trade-offs between benefits, such as resource abundance, and disadvantages, such as the avoidance of risk. The latter includes human disturbances, to which large carnivores, with their large spatial requirements, are especially sensitive. We investigated the ecological processes underlying multi-...

The reintroduction of lynx Lynx lynx to the Palatinate Forest with adjacent suitable habitats in France, Switzerland and Germany spurred the interest to augment the international cooperation to exchange information, develop harmonized approaches and to establish supporting organisational structures. Thus, the Expert Committee Lynx has been establis...

Persistence of viable populations may be uncertain for large carnivore species, especially for those established in human-dominated landscapes. Here, we studied the Eurasian lynx in Western Europe established in the Upper Rhine metapopulation (i.e., Jura, Vosges-Palatinian and Black Forest populations) and in the Alpine population. These population...

The project Status and Conservation of the Alpine Lynx Population SCALP is an ongoing programme aiming to coordinate the Eurasian lynx Lynx lynx monitoring, conservation and management activities in the Alps, but the monitoring approach has recently been expanded to the neighbouring Dinaric and Jura Mountains. The long-term goal of the SCALP is to...

The present report describes the situation of the Eurasian lynx Lynx lynx in the Jura Mountains, shared by France and Switzerland. The species disappeared between the 17th and 20th century and recolonised its natural range from the 1970s following reintroduction in Switzerland. The current distribution in the region covers a total of 13,700 km², in...

In countries such as Mongolia, where globalization of the cashmere market has spurred herders to massively increase their livestock numbers, an important conservation concern is the effect of livestock encroachment on wildlife. This is especially important inside protected areas (PAs), which often represent the last refugia for threatened large mam...

Illegal hunting represents a major threat to the conservation of predators, but its impact remains difficult to assess as there are strong incentives to conceal this criminal activity. Attributing declines of carnivores to poaching is therefore an important conservation challenge. We present a case study of the Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx) in the Swis...

Abstract Habitat selection is strongly scale‐dependent, and inferring the characteristic scale at which an organism responds to environmental variation is necessary to obtain reliable predictions. The occupancy framework is frequently used to model species distribution with the advantage of accounting for imperfect observation, but occupancy studie...

In Switzerland, the European wildcat (Felis silvestris), a native felid, is protected by national law. In recent decades, the wildcat has slowly returned to much of its original range and may have even expanded into new areas that were not known to be occupied before. For the implementation of efficient conservation actions, reliable information ab...

Large carnivores can cause considerable economic damage, mainly due to livestock depredation. These conflicts instigate negative attitude towards their conservation, which could in the extreme case lead to retaliatory killing. Here we focus on the snow leopard (Panthera uncia), a species of conservation concern with particularly large spatial requi...

1. Illegal hunting (poaching) represents a major threat to the conservation of large predators. Yet, its impact remains difficult to quantify as there are strong incentives to conceal this criminal activity. Attributing changes in the population status of large carnivores in part to poaching is therefore an important conservation challenge. 2. We p...

The return of top carnivores to their historical range triggers conflicts with the interests of different stakeholder groups. Anticipating such conflicts is key to appropriate conservation management, which calls for reliable spatial predictions of future carnivore occurrence. Previous models have assessed general habitat suitability for wolves, bu...

Studying activity patterns and temporal overlap among carnivores and their putative prey is difficult because of their secretive and elusive nature. With large carnivores declining worldwide, it is imperative for conservation planning that we understand how large carnivores interact with their prey and competitors. Camera trapping offers a promisin...

Background Sarcoptic mange is a contagious skin disease of wild and domestic mammals caused by the mite Sarcoptes scabiei . Reports of sarcoptic mange in wildlife increased worldwide in the second half of the 20th century, especially since the 1990s. The aim of this study was to provide new insights into the epidemiology of mange by (i) documenting...

Abstract Obtaining estimates of animal population density is a key step in providing sound conservation and management strategies for wildlife. For many large carnivores however, estimating density is difficult because these species are elusive and wide‐ranging. Here, we focus on providing the first density estimates of the Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx...

Weltweit wird in den letzten Jahrzehnten ein dramatischer Rückgang der Populationen großer Wildtiere beobachtet, so dass viele Arten mittlerweile unmittelbar vor dem Aussterben stehen. Umso erstaunlicher ist es, dass sich in Europa wie auch in Nordamerika, entgegen dem weltweiten Trend, die Bestände großer Wildtiere wieder erholen, obwohl diese Län...

Reliable density estimates are the cornerstone of effective conservation and management planning. For large carnivores however, estimating density is difficult because these species are elusive and wide-ranging. Here, we focus on the Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx) in the French Jura and Vosges Mountains (Mts) and provide the first density estimates. We...

Large carnivores are wide-ranging species, highly mobile and live in human-dominated landscapes where habitat destruction and fragmentation are important threats. In parallel, the terrestrial transportation network is getting denser and acts as a barrier for the movement of these animals as well as it increases the risk of collisions. The Eurasian...

As large carnivores recover throughout Europe, their distribution needs to be studied to determine their conservation status and assess the potential for human‐carnivore conflicts. However, efficient monitoring of many large carnivore species is challenging due to their rarity, elusive behavior, and large home ranges. Their monitoring can include o...

Large carnivores are wide-ranging species, highly mobile and live in human-dominated landscapes where habitat destruction and fragmentation are important threats. In parallel, the terrestrial transportation network is getting denser and acts as a barrier for the movement of these animals as well as it increases the risk of collisions. In this cont...

Understanding the impact of livestock on native wildlife is of increasing conservation relevance. For the Vulnerable snow leopard Panthera uncia , wild prey reduction, intensifying human–wildlife conflicts and retaliatory killings are severe threats potentially exacerbated by the presence of livestock. Elucidating patterns of co-occurrence of snow...

The Eurasian lynx is of special conservation concern based on the European Union's Habitat Directive and its populations need to be maintained or restored at favourable conservation status. To evaluate lynx population status, appropriate monitoring needs to be in place. We modelled the distribution dynamics of lynx in the Alps (200 000 km2) during...

The Eurasian lynx Lynx lynx population in the Carpathian Mountains is considered to be one of the best preserved and largest in Europe and hence is a source for past and current reintroduction projects in central Europe. However, its status in Slovakia has been reported to the European Commission on the basis of hunters´ reports and expert estimate...

Le statut actuel du lynx en Valais a fait l'objet d'un suivi durant quatre hivers (2011–2015) au moyen de pièges photographiques répartis sur l'ensemble du territoire cantonal. Les résultats montrent une distribution spatiale très hétérogène du félin. La densité la plus élevée est atteinte dans la partie nord-ouest du canton – à proximité des popul...

Habitat destruction and fragmentation are important threats to large carnivores as they are wide-ranging species and live in human-dominated landscapes. The road network is getting denser and acts as a barrier for these species as well as it increases the risk of collisions with vehicles. The creation of corridors is often advocated in these situat...

The future management of the wolf population in Switzerland requires knowledge about the size of packs and the number of young (BAFU 2010). Therefore, we must now develop a monitoring, allowing us in the future to register all packs, resident pairs, resident solitary wolves, and as many transient (dispersing) solitary wolves as possible within Swit...

Camera-trapping of Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx) was carried out during 60 nights, from 5th December 2014 to 3rd February 2015 in north-eastern Switzerland. 54 sites were sampled using pairs of camera-traps, in order to picture both flanks of the lynx to ensure individual identification. The camera traps operated during 3156 of the theoretically 3240 c...

Thèse biol. Lausanne. Literaturverz. Université, Lausanne

This paper is the first-ever attempt to outline the interaction of Himalayan lynx (Lynx lynx isabellinus) with humans and its abundance measured through motion triggered camera traps in Hindu Kush Mountain Range of District Chitral, Pakistan. The study was undertaken in December-January, 2011 for a period of 35 days with a total trap days of 770 re...

For patients with localized cancer of the brain, lung, liver, or other organs, high-precision localization devices for radiation application have been developed since the 1950s. In recent years, with the combination of perfect immobilization either for the head or for the body of the patient and precise navigation of the beams by frames (called: st...

Shape files of current and historical distribution maps of large carnivore species in Europe. Also available from http://datadryad.org/resource/doi:10.5061/dryad.986mp

1. Abundance is a key quantity for conservation and management strategies but remains challenging to assess in the field. Capture-recapture (CR) methods are often used to estimate abundance while correcting for imperfect detection but these methods are costly. Occupancy, sometimes considered as a surrogate for abundance, is estimated through the co...

During November 2010–February 2011, we used camera traps to estimate the population density of Eurasian lynx Lynx lynx in Ciglikara Nature Reserve-Turkey, an isolated population in South-west Asia. Lynx density was calculated through spatial capture-recapture models. In a sampling effort of 1093 camera trap days, we identified 15 independent indivi...

Use of photographic capture–recapture analyses to estimate abundance of species with distinctive natural marks has become an important tool for monitoring rare or cryptic species, or both. Two different methods are available to estimate density: nonspatial capture–recapture models where the trap polygon is buffered with the half or full mean maximu...

Digital outdoor cameras are increasingly used in wildlife research because they allow species inventories, population estimates, and behavior or activity observations. Which camera model is suitable and practical depends on environmental conditions, focus species and specific scientific questions posed. Here we focused on testing cameras appropriat...

Large carnivores (bears Ursus arctos, wolves Canis lupus, lynx Lynx lynx and wolverines Gulo gulo) are among the most challenging group of species to maintain as large and continuous populations or to reintegrate back into the European landscape. Political, socioeconomic and society changes challenge past management approaches in some of the large...

Infectious keratoconjunctivitis (IKC) caused by Mycoplasma conjunctivae is a widespread ocular affection of free-ranging Caprinae in the Alpine arc. Along with host and pathogen characteristics, it has been hypothesized that environmental factors such as UV light are involved in the onset and course of the disease. This study aimed at evaluating th...

Radiotherapy is an important and well integrated part in modern treatment concepts for cancer of the lung and pleura. Thanks to technical progress in the last years radiotherapy has managed to prove its role in all stages of lung cancers and has opened a spectrum of new treatment options. Stereotactic radiotherapy of the early NSCLC has become the...

Eurasian lynx are individually identifiable by their unique coat markings, making them ideal candidates for capture–recapture (CMR) surveys. We evaluated the use of digital photography to estimate Eurasian lynx population abundance and density within the Bavarian Forest National Park. From November 2008 to January 2009 we placed 24 camera trap site...

Camera‐trapping of Eurasian lynx was carried out during 60 nights, between end of february and end of april 2012 in the north eastern parts of Switzerland. With the help of the local game wardens, fifty‐two sites were sampled using pairs of camera‐traps mounted along forest roads and path in order to picture both flanks of a lynx to ensure positive...

The future of wild tigers is dire, and the Global Tiger Initiative's (GTI) goal of doubling tiger population size by the next year of the tiger in 2022 will be challenging. The GTI has identified 20 tiger conservation landscapes (TCL) within which recovery actions will be needed to achieve these goals. The Amur tiger conservation landscape offers t...