Gesa Kluth (born 1970 near

Göttingen Göttingen (, , ; nds, Chöttingen) is a college town, university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the Capital (political), capital of Göttingen (district), the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. At the end of 2019, t ...

) is a German biologist and wolf expert. She studied biology in

Bremen Bremen (Low German also: ''Breem'' or ''Bräm''), officially the City Municipality of Bremen (german: Stadtgemeinde Bremen, ), is the capital of the German state Free Hanseatic City of Bremen (''Freie Hansestadt Bremen''), a two-city-state consis ...

and in 1996 she worked with a

wolf The wolf (''Canis lupus''; : wolves), also known as the gray wolf or grey wolf, is a large canine native to Eurasia and North America. More than thirty subspecies of ''Canis lupus'' have been recognized, and gray wolves, as popularly u ...

pack in

Estonia Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, a ...

as part of her diploma thesis. After spending some time in Brandenburg, she is currently living in

Oberlausitz Upper Lusatia (german: Oberlausitz ; hsb, Hornja Łužica ; dsb, Górna Łužyca; szl, Gōrnŏ Łużyca; pl, Łużyce Górne or ''Milsko''; cz, Horní Lužice) is a historical region in Germany and Poland. Along with Lower Lusatia to the ...

in Saxony, where the first free-living wolf packs in Germany have settled. Gesa Kluth is regarded as a wolf expert in Germany. Together with her colleague

Ilka Reinhardt Ilka Reinhardt (born 1966 in the GDR) is a German biologist and wolf expert. She is together with Gesa Kluth Founder and director of LUPUS - Institute for Wolf Monitoring and Research in Germany and the Freundeskreis freilebender Wölfe. She was ...

she founded in January 2003 the today's LUPUS - Institute for Wolf Monitoring and Research in Germany in Spreewitz, north-west of the Military training area Oberlausitz, from where the re-spread of wolves in Germany took place. Gesa Kluth works together with the

International Fund for Animal Welfare The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) is one of the largest animal welfare and conservation charities in the world. The organization works to rescue individual animals, safeguard populations, preserve habitat, and advocate for great ...

, the

Naturschutzbund Deutschland The Naturschutzbund Deutschland e.V. ("Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union") or NABU is a German non-governmental organisation (NGO) dedicated to conservation at home and abroad, including the protection of rivers, forests and individu ...

and the Saxon State Ministry for Environment and Agriculture. In Poland, the Polish biologist

Sabina Nowak Sabina Nowak (; married name Pierużek-Nowak; born 6 June 1959) is a Polish scientist and wolf expert. She is president of the Association for Nature Wolf (AfN Wolf) and a member of the Large Carnivore Initiative for Europe. Life In 1983, Nowa ...

has a similar position. She sees it as one of her tasks to cooperate with livestock farmers in the region. The aim is to protect farm animals without killing wild wolves. Gesa Kluth is co-author of many specialist publications by members of the

Large Carnivore Initiative for Europe The Large Carnivore Initiative for Europe (LCIE) is a working group of the IUCN Commission on the Conservation of Species. and a Non-governmental organization. President of the LCIE is the Secretary of the IUCN Wolf Specialist Group Luigi Boitani. I ...

. In 2003/2004 Gesa Kluth, Sebastian Körner and Ilka Reinhardt discovered a litter of hybrids in

Lusatia Lusatia (german: Lausitz, pl, Łużyce, hsb, Łužica, dsb, Łužyca, cs, Lužice, la, Lusatia, rarely also referred to as Sorbia) is a historical region in Central Europe, split between Germany and Poland. Lusatia stretches from the Bóbr ...

which was to be taken from the wild. Only the mother animal and two of the young hybrids could be caught. The mother animal was released again. At that time, wolf experts in Germany and Poland were not aware that the

allele An allele (, ; ; modern formation from Greek ἄλλος ''állos'', "other") is a variation of the same sequence of nucleotides at the same place on a long DNA molecule, as described in leading textbooks on genetics and evolution. ::"The chro ...

at the agouti-locus is a recessive gene that can only be expressed in the

phenotype In genetics, the phenotype () is the set of observable characteristics or traits of an organism. The term covers the organism's morphology or physical form and structure, its developmental processes, its biochemical and physiological proper ...

if both parent animals are

genetic carrier A hereditary carrier (genetic carrier or just carrier), is a person or other organism that has inherited a recessive allele for a genetic trait or mutation but usually does not display that trait or show symptoms of the disease. Carriers are, ho ...

s of the gene. Otherwise they would have kept the mother animal in captivity.Eva Nessenius: Beweise für eine hybridisierte Gründerpopulation der Wölfe in Sachsen. In
Beiträge zur Jagd- und Wildforschung, 2019, Band 44
Seite 113–122.

References

External links

*Planet Wissen
Interview with Gesa Kluth
*Video documentation
Measures concerning a litter of hybrids born in 2003
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kluth, Gesa 1970 births 21st-century German biologists German animal welfare workers German women biologists Humans and wolves Living people