In May 2022, the Swedish government commissioned the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) to investigate, based on the best available knowledge and scientific expertise, if and under what circumstances the reference value for the wolf (Canis lupus) regarding population size, as defined for favourable conservation status according to the European Union’s Habitats Directive, could be in the interval between 170 and 270 individuals as stated in the parliament proposition from 2012 (prop. 2012/13:191).

We conducted independent analyses using different simulation tools (Miller: Vortex (Lacy and Pollak, 2022); Dussex: SLiM (Haller and Messer 2019)) to explore the demographic and genetic characteristic defining wolf population viability in Scandinavia. Comparing the results from our independent simulations facilitates an assessment of the congruence and robustness of our results which will then be used by SEPA to develop recommendations for wolf population management in Sweden.