Background regarding surveys of dead wolves

Surveys of dead wolves are conducted in the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin (Leibniz-IZW), which acts as the national reference centre for monitoring based on dead wolves. All wolf carcasses are surveyed in accordance to human forensic medicine schemes including computed tomography, dissection, histology, parasitology, virology, and bacteriology. In this way, possible diseases or previous contact with pathogenic agents can be identified. Routine surveys include testing for parvovirus infection, canine distemper, rabies, Aujeszky’s disease, infectious hepatitis (Hepatitis contagiosa canis, HCC) and trichinellosis. The tests for rabies, Aujeszky’s disease, HCC and trichinellosis are conducted by cooperation partners of Leibniz-IZW, such as Friedrich-Löffler Institute (FLI), Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR), and Federal Laboratory Berlin-Brandenburg. For research purposes, all animal cadavers are tested for leptospirosis and francisella and corona virus infections (Leibniz-IZW), resistant Escherichia coli and Brucella (BfR), polyoma and herpesvirus (Robert Koch Institute, RKI), hepatitis type E virus (FLI), and dirofilaria (Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine, BNITM).