About Us 

The  GOlden JAckal Informal Study Group in Europe GOJAGE                                                                                      

History

After the 3rd international survey of specialized monitoring for the golden jackal populations in natural areas from Romania, Azimut 2011 (February 2011), several discussions took place on the topic of European concerns regarding the recent phenomenon of natural resettlement of Europe by the golden jackal species and the importance that would be a unification of studies and data from Europe and abroad.

The Ecology Department of Crispus NGO Sibiu (Romania) and the Natural History Museum from Udine (Italy) took the initiative to form this informal study group and agreed to open a free website for a better collection of information and presentation of current concerns regarding the study of jackal populations in Europe. (Ovidiu Banea & Luca Lapini).

Members

GOJAGE (2011): Giorgos Giannatos (Greece), Luca Lapini (Italy), Dumitru Murariu (Romania), Miha Krofel (Slovenia), Dusko Cirovic (Serbia), Laszlo Szabo (Hungary), Ovidiu Constantin Banea (Romania), Petre Gargarea (Romania), Daniel Perez Vazquez (Spain), Jaroslav Cervinka (Czech Republic), Martin Salek (Czech Republic), Aleksandra Penezic (Serbia), Frank Zachos (Austria), Mark Hajdu (Hungary), Letizia Kozlan (Italy).

Since our group "GOJAGE" was actually activating in 2011, other researchers from all around the globe joined GOJAGE: Ivana Selanec (Croatia), Alexandra Grigore (Romania), Nicoleta Dinculescu (Romania), Krassimir Kurtev (Bulgaria), Gabriella Dragne (Greece), Dan Vasiu (Romania), Franco Milani (Italy), Stefano Pecorella (Italy), Tomaž Berce (Slovenia), Cristian-Remus Papp (Romania), Coşkun Tez (Turkey), Osman Ibiş (Turkey), Mateja Deržič (Slovenia), Jasna Mladenovič (Slovenia), Ivan Budinski (Croatia), Lejla Colic (Croatia), Stefano Filacorda (Italy), Andrea Caboni (Italy), Luca Dorigo (Italy), Marco Pavanello (Italy), Peep Männil (Estonia), Kaja Lotman (Estonia), Liisi Laos (Estonia), Alex Lotman (Estonia), Tonis Ulm (Estonia), Antti Halkka (Finland), Hiroshi Tsunoda (Japan), Ilya Acosta Pankov (Bulgaria), Felix Böcker (Germany), Dominique Van Asperen (Greece), Igor Zagorodniuk (Ukraine), Mykola Rozhenko (Ukraine), Sergey Zhyla (Ukraine), Valery Dombrovski (Belarus), Viktor Demianchik (Belarus), Elena Dyatlova (Ukraine), Andriy-Taras Bashta (Ukraine), Jose Luis Alvarez Piernas (Spain), Lucian Parfon (Romania), Radu Mot (Romania), Chandika Jayaratne (Sri Lanka), Maria Petridou (Greece), Vasyl Prydatko (Ukraine), Grygoriy Kolomytsev (Ukraine), Michelle Drew (Australia), Stoyan Stoyanov (Bulgaria), Mihai Marinov (Romania), Marian Tudor (Romania),  Ion Munteanu (Romania), Nikolai Spassov (Bulgaria), Claudio Sillero-Zubiri (UK), Yadvendradev Jhala (India),  Joszef Lanski (Hungary), Doru Panaitescu (Romania), Matt Hayward (Australia), Anja Molinari-Jobin (Switzerland), Georgi Markov (Bulgaria), Isabela Maria Filimon (Romania), Benjamin Benti (France), Adela Dumitrascu (Sweden), Silviu Chiriac (Romania), Stanley Gehrt (USA), Andrei Mihalca (Romania), Jennifer Hatlauf (Austria), Morten Kure Kattenhøj (Denmark), John Linnell (Norway), Cosmin A. Taru (Romania), Marc Graf (Austria), Alex Gridan (Romania), Mauro Belardi (Italy), Chiara Elisa Spallino (Italy), Maria Benciolini (Italy), Nicola Bressi (Italy). 

2023: Giannis Gasteratos (Greece), Sampath Seneviratne (Sri Lanka), Uthpala Jayaweera (Sri Lanka), Josip Kusak (Croatia), Glenn Lelieveld (Netherlands), Marshall Sarah (Austria), Lazzaroni Martina (Austria), Hubert Potocnik (Slovenia), Frank Narve Rosell (Norway), Hanna Kavli Lodberg-Holm (Norway), Nuno Guimaraes (Portugal), Jana Durova (Slovakia), Alper Erturk (Turkey), Bledi Hoxha (Albania), Dragos Hanciu (Romania), Katarzyna Bojarska (Poland), Johanna Perry (Netherlands), Zoi Fondoulakou (Greece), Antonia Galanaki (Greece), Lucian Bolboaca (Romania), Sotiris Kontouras (Greece), Theodoros Naziridis (Greece). 

2025: Delia Cretu (Romania), Carmen Dumitrescu (Romania), Boglárka Török (Romania), Cristian Patachia (Romania), Bogdan-Ioachim Bulete (Romania), Miruna-Maria Matei (Romania).

Representative members can be found in a well-known work by GOJAGE, Hatlauf et al. (2016 Assessment of new records), on page 4 (HERE).

We received reliable data and scientific support from Janosch Arnold (Austria), Boris Krystufek (Slovenia), Grigore Baboianu (Romania), Nikolai Spassov (Bulgaria), Vassil Golemansky (Bulgaria), Wieslaw Bogdanowicz (Poland), and Vasyl Prydatko (Ukraine).

THE GOAL of GOJAGE

This group is open to anyone who wants to get involved in studying jackals and the relationships they develop with biodiversity and human activities. GOJAGE has no management structures and is not subject to any kind of policies or demands by administrative or scientific organizations.

The sole purpose of creating this group is to gather information about the golden jackal and related species and to communicate joint research activities and specialized monitoring for the golden jackal species.