More wolves spotted north of Oslo

April 16, 2012  

Police in Akershus County received several more calls during the night and early Monday from residents who claimed they’d seen wolves from Lillestrøm to Skedsmokorset and Gjerdrum, northeast of Oslo. Wolf tracks were confirmed by state officials on Monday.

The new w0lf-sightings are believed to involve a different animal than the wolf confirmed to have been roaming on the Nesodden peninsula located south of Oslo. That wolf is being monitored with tracking devices, and it was confirmed at a location south of Ås on Saturday afternoon. Conservationists think it’s heading in an easterly direction back towards the Swedish border area where it came from.

Wolves have also been seen in Oslo’s eastern forest known as Østmarka, with one spotted not far from where the first of last night’s reports came from. That’s when a man called the Romerike Police District at 11:26pm to report seeing a wolf near the Lillestrøm bridge. At 2:25am on Monday came a second report of a wolf observed on Nygårdsveien in nearby Strømmen, east-northeast of Oslo.

At 6:40am came a report of a wolf between Frogner and Gjellbo, farther to the north. Two more reports came just a few minutes later, from motorists driving on the main E6 motorway that runs northeast from Oslo towards the airport at Gardermoen. Wolves were observed near the major Skedsmokorset intersection and along the highway towards Sørum.

It snowed in the area during the night and Jan Wilberg of the state wildlife agency Statens Naturoppsyn told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) that wolf tracks were found near the E6 highway. “If it’s the same animal, then it’s moving northwest from some fields near Leirelva in Gjerdrum,” Wilberg told NRK.

One of the sightings came from a taxidermist named Ole Martin Lislevand. He has no doubt he saw a wolf, after stuffing one once. “I know what they look like,” Lislevand told NRK.

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