Researchers can no longer give exact count of Denmark’s wolves
Wednesday 12th August 2026 on 07:15 in
Denmark
Researchers can no longer say precisely how many wolves live in Denmark as the population has grown and monitoring methods have changed, DR reports.
“No one knows for certain how many wolves we have in Denmark,” said Peter Sunde, a wolf expert and professor at Aarhus University’s Department of Ecoscience.
The latest population assessment found 49 adult wolves in Denmark at the end of April this year, just before new pups were born. A wolf typically has between five and six pups.
Researchers can estimate the number of wolves in spring by counting breeding territories, Sunde said. But they no longer have the resources to follow every individual wolf closely or analyse enough DNA samples to establish an exact total.
Monitoring focuses on territories
Before 2024, researchers tracked individual wolves and analysed all wolf droppings to monitor their movements and numbers. As the population increased, that task became too extensive.
“Are there wolves coming across the border from the south? There are also wolves that leave again. So we cannot continuously count them,” said Kent Olsen, chief scientist and senior researcher at the Natural History Museum in Aarhus. He leads and coordinates Denmark’s national wolf monitoring programme.
Monitoring now focuses on searching for wolf DNA and installing wildlife cameras in territories where researchers know wolves have settled. Not all collected samples are sent for DNA analysis because there are not enough resources or funding.
The samples can include faeces and urine, saliva from deer killed in the wild, wolf hair, and tissue and blood from wolves that have been hit by vehicles.
Olsen said analysing every sample would provide more information, but it is not necessary for the main task of monitoring established pairs and linking them to territories.
The question of wolf numbers has drawn renewed attention after videos showed wolves close to people, including one filmed trotting in front of a family restaurant north of Nørre Nebel and another recorded by a 14-year-old girl who said a wolf followed her on her way home.