The last decades the populations of wild boar (Sus scrofa) has increased rapidly over the species? entire European range, including Sweden. This is followed by increasing human-Wildlife conflicts as a result of the wild boar foraging behavior, causing damage to agricultural crop fields due to trampling and feeding. To be able to minimize damage we need more knowledge of where in the fields the risk of damage is high and what features in the landscape that affect this risk. I analyzed damage distribution in relation to the distance to six different landscape features; forest, road, ditch, building, game field and bait station, in the study area, the Island Mörkö in eastern central Sweden.

Emerging infectious diseases are a recurring threat to both human and animal health. Understanding the multiple causes behind the emergence of new diseases is key to the prevention of new and potentially devastating outbreaks. The list of underlying causes is long, including a variety of anthropogenic, environmental, molecular and climatic changes that promote the emergence and spread of disease. Two of these factors are central to the emergence of new diseases and receive special attention in this study. The spread of disease from Wildlife to livestock and diseases that spread from animals to humans (zoonoses) are of importance as they implicated in the majority of EID events.

In the Maasai Mara National Reserve the native people, the Maasai, have lived for a long time following their own traditions. Their traditional lifestyle is that of a nomadic people, leading their cattle to the best grazing. Sharing their land with a large variation of different animals, one of them being the African Elephant (Loxodonta africana), the Maasi people have since long adapted to a life side by side with these giants, as well as the fierce predators living in the area.The aim of this study is to determine whether the Maasai settlement, known as Boma, has any impact on the elephants in the surrounding area. In order to conclude whether the bomas has an impact or not, observations of the Wildlife were carried out. Observations were conducted in two different seasons, in December 2003 and May/June in 2004.

Uganda anses vara ett högriskland för utveckling av nya plötsligt uppdykande sjukdomar (emerging infectious diseases, EID). Grisproduktionen i Uganda har ökat drastiskt de senaste åren och en stor del av Ugandas grisar är frigående. De kan därför lätt komma i kontakt med vilda djur i deras närområde. Porcint circovirus 2 (PCV2) är ett ubikvitärt virus och etiologiskt agens för bland annat porcine multisystemic wasting syndrome (PMWS). Förutom att infektera tamgrisar över hela världen så har PCV2 också visats kunna infektera vildsvin.

The Northern Raccoon (Procyon lotor) belongs to the Carnivore-family and is a species endemic to North America. Every year hundreds of orphaned raccoon cubs are admitted into the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Minnesota (WRCM), a non-profit organization where all injured or orphaned wild animals are admitted and receive quality health care with the goal of being released out into the wild. The WRCM routinely vaccinate all of the admitted raccoon cubs with a killed feline panleucopenia vaccine, but despite this there are outbreaks of parvovirus infection every year where up to 50% of the admitted cubs have been euthanized or died. The objective of this study was to determine whether vaccinating the admitted raccoon kits has any significant protective effect to developing clinical parvoviral disease. A single-blinded cohort study was designed with two parallel, independent groups. One group was given a dose of killed feline parvovirus vaccine at admission, and the other group was not given any vaccination at all. Assignment to the vaccinated or unvaccinated group was on a per-litter basis and done randomly by drawing lots out of a box.

This essay contains a discoursive analysis of fifteen travel reports from five of the largest papers in Sweden. The travel reports contains recaptions from Wildlife tourism experiences were the predators are the main target, or at least one of the main targets. Seven of the reports are from Sweden and eight of them from Russia, Rumania, Finland, Turkey and the United States. Predators in this essay aims to those in Sweden called ?the big five?, these are: bears, wolves, lynxes , wolverines and golden eagles.

The European bison is a species which is no longer present in the wild fauna of Sweden. Reintroduction has been proposed in several different forums. Reintroduction is an attempt to reestablish a viable population of a species in an area to which it is native. To make such an operation successful in the long run it is essential to know the attitudes of the stakeholders involved. This study has sensed the attitudes towards reintroduction of European bison to Sweden.

Cumulative effects are seldom treated in Swedish Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA). This report treats these questions and which procedures and methods that can be used when assessing cumulative effects in EIA. This report is a literature study where also a case study is a part. The case study shows how existing methods for cumulative effects can be used in practice. The report is concentrated on biology and treats cumulative effects on premises of biodiversity and roads. Cumulative effects include both direct and indirect effects.

White-Nose Syndrome, WNS, is an emerging fungal disease in the Northern American bat population causing mass mortality in infected hibernacula. Geomyces destructans is a newly discovered psychrophilic fungus causing WNS but the pathogenesis and epidemiology of the disease is not yet fully clarified. Geomyces destructans has been found in Europe but has not been a cause of mass mortality there. This study is the first investigation done to see if G. destructans is present in Sweden.

The aim with this report is to formulate a strategic method to optimize selection processes of DNA-samples from a faeces inventory to identify as many individuals in as few analyzes as possible, and by that keep down the costs of brown bear management. Brown bear management in Sweden founds today on results from faeces inventory and is substantially led by the county administration boards. Data from the years of 2004 and 2009´s inventories in Västerbotten was used to test and evaluate different methods in selection processes of which faeces that should be sampled. Comparison were made between making selection by chance, by spatial distribution and by calculating variations in logistic regressions coefficient b, in other words bear density and probability in finding same individual in several faeces. We can show making selection by chance is the most uncertain method.

Through millennia, humans have shaped the European landscapes. Agriculture, hunting andforestry have influenced virtually every ecosystem on the continent and formed what we todaythink of as the cultural landscape; a mosaic pattern of cropland, fields, pasture and forests. Thepast two centuries, globalization, industrialization and urbanization have come to pose a threatto the existence of these landscapes. European farmlands are now being abandoned at analarming rate, and the associated loss of landscape preservation, biodiversity and ecosystemservices is a concern to the scientific community and public alike.This thesis studies if the implementation of the relatively new conservation strategy rewilding(recreating self-sustaining ecosystems and reintroducing keystone species) can be a part of thesolution to preserve cultural landscapes and biodiversity in Sweden. Through interviewssupplemented with studies of published works, expertise from different fields has beencompiled to provide an overall picture of the capacity of rewildings as conservation method.

It has been shown that moose can affect plant community composition and structure. Selective browsing with other damages of large herbivores on tree species with different tolerance to disturbance could reshape the tree layer in both managed and natural forests. Rowan Sorbus aucuparia is widely distributed throughout Sweden and Europe. Research has shown that browsing by moose may prevent rowan from reaching browsing safe heights. The goal has been formulated that, where rowan is indigenous, it should have a good competition status and be able to reach tree level.

The purpose of this study is to exam how two environmental organizations reason about the loss of biodiversity. The research questions are; what is the view in these organizations regarding biodiversity? What are the underlying environmental discourses behind their reasoning, and how do they reason about the risks associated with the loss of biodiversity? As a first part of this thesis a thorough review of existing literature and online resources about the actions of environmental organizations was conducted. Two organizations were interviewed, World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Naturskyddsforeningen. The questions for the study were analyzed in light of Dryzek´s (1997) reasoning about environmental discourses and using the concept of risk by Beck (1998).

After the storm Gudrun in 2005, the Swedish Transport Administration started clear-cutting of railroad corridors to reduce the risk of trees falling down on the tracks. Simultaneously, train accidents with moose and roe deer have become more frequent and the costs for consequent delays and repairs of engines are of growing concern. There is reason to assume that tree-clearance of railroad corridors may have contributed to an increase in number of accidents with moose and roe deer because the cleared areas provide attractive forage and thus may attract Wildlife. The objective of my study was to investigate how clearing of trees affected the number of accidents with moose and roe deer. I compared deer-train collision frequencies before and after clearance of the selected railroads and compared these with uncleared control railroads in a BACI (before-after control-impact) approach.

During the timber floating era, most of Sweden?s watercourses were altered. This decreased the amount of available spawning habitats for salmonids, and hence had a negative effect on the riverine brown trout (Salmo trutta) populations. Reconstruction of spawning grounds is today a common measure in restoration of altered streams in Sweden. However, very little evaluation of the effectiveness of these reconstructed spawning grounds exists.