lf
Pack tracking through the backcountry of Slovakia is a frustrating business when the howl of the wolf has been drowned out by the roar of the chainsaw.
location +-18ft N20o 54.125’ W156o 65.589’
WORDS Claire Halliday IMAGES Shannon Morris
I’VE COME TO SLOVAKIA’S Tatra Mountains to track grey wolf and lynx populations. Imagining my first encounter with these intriguing predators had helped take the edge off the long flight from Melbourne but, barely two hours into the first day with the Biosphere Expeditions team who will lead me through this adventure-cum-research project, I’m told that we might not actually see them at all. My fellow travellers – I am the only Australian in a group of 10 whose members hail from the US, the UK, Ireland and Germany – seem just a little crestfallen. Just as quickly, though, disappointment morphs into something different, something much bigger. Let’s call it determined hope. Each of us has travelled a long way for this experience – to join a scientific team collecting data that may help determine the future of these animals. I have come to see a wolf. They have come to see a wolf. Damn it, we’re going to try our hardest to find one. With the awkwardness of strangers on a mass blind date, we’d met at a pub in the unremarkable Slovakian capital, Bratislava. As the beer flowed, introductions were made and we met our fearless leaders: Biosphere’s Expeditions Operations Manager Malika Fettak, and the project’s head scientist Robin Rigg. Quickly I pegged the group as ‘regular’ people – commercial real estate agents, veterinarians, and archaeologists among them. Several have experienced
location +-15ft N14o 31.208’ W190o 32.439’
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w
hungry for the
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Having been dropped into the Tatra Mountains straight from the middle of an Australian summer, the cold Slovakian air feels like a razor blade slicing into my throat each time I inhale. Lactic acid fills my joints, my legs ache and a combination of bitterly cold conditions and physical exertion leaves me struggling for breath. This is the hardest I have pushed my body in a long time but I know I have to keep going. No one else has stopped, despite their own obvious struggles, and I’m not about to be the first. While the climb seems endless, the scarred landscape whispers horror stories in my ear that distract me from my own pain. The range, utterly picturesque in places, is denuded and damaged in others, where intense logging has left a stubble of jagged tree-stumps scratching at the low cloud. Beauty is certainly under threat here, but it’s the survival of a beast that I’m concerned about first and foremost; a creature that howls through the legends of this region and prowls through fairytales read to children everywhere, invariably playing the part of predator and pariah. I’m hunting for wolves.
location +-17ft N16o 36.489’ W320o 78.209’
slovakia legends of adventure
36 ou ter edge
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