Forest Mammals of Turkey: Woodland Species and Records

Turkey’s forest mammal fauna includes tree-dwelling rodents, forest-floor mice and shrews, tree-roosting bats, deer, wild boar, carnivores, and mammals that move between woodland, streams, scrub, and forest openings. There is no single official national checklist labeled “forest mammals of Turkey,” so a defensible list must separate direct records from Turkish forests, country-level occurrence, and broader evidence of woodland dependence.

Turkey’s woodland habitats do not support one uniform mammal community

Current forest-management data reported by Turkey’s General Directorate of Forestry place the country’s forest area at 23,375,331 hectares. That total covers forests with very different climates, tree composition, elevation, canopy structure, and levels of human alteration.[a]

Humid deciduous and mixed forests along the Black Sea can support brown bear, wolf, red deer, roe deer, European wildcat, pine marten, squirrels, dormice, voles, shrews, and woodland bats. Thracian deciduous woodland has a partly European mammal assemblage. Inland mountain forests combine fir, pine, oak, beech, open slopes, and rocky ground. Mediterranean woodland is often a mosaic of pine, oak, scrub, farmland, ravines, and burned or regenerating stands rather than closed forest alone.

A national occurrence record does not prove that a species inhabits every Turkish forest, while a camera-trap photograph proves presence only at the sampled place and time.

The biological boundary of a woodland mammal list

Forest association occurs at several levels. The strongest cases are mammals that use trees, cavities, bark, canopy, leaf litter, or mature woodland as core habitat. Other species regularly feed, rest, breed, or travel in forests but also use grassland, farmland, scrub, or rocky terrain. A third group is tied to wooded streams, wet forest margins, or openings within a forest landscape.

• Tree- and woodland-dependent mammals: squirrels, dormice, several forest mice, pine marten, European wildcat, and tree-roosting bats.
• Regular forest-landscape users: brown bear, wolf, red deer, roe deer, wild boar, badgers, foxes, and least weasel.
• Forest-edge and riparian mammals: golden jackal, brown hare, Eurasian otter, some shrews, and bats using wooded streams or canopy gaps.

Turkey’s updated 2025 national checklist recognized 177 wild mammal species, including 165 terrestrial and 12 marine species. That country total is broader than the woodland list because it also contains steppe, alpine, desert-edge, cave, wetland, coastal, and marine taxa.[b]

The live Mammal Diversity Database country account currently lists 181 living species for Turkey. The difference reflects database timing and taxonomic treatment rather than four newly documented forest mammals.[c]

Mammals directly recorded in Turkish forest field studies

The following species were photographed in the western Black Sea deciduous-forest survey or captured in the Soğuksu National Park habitat study. The table includes every species-level taxon represented by those two focal datasets, rather than a selection of better-known animals.

Western Black Sea camera-trap records

A survey covering about 3,500 square kilometres in and around Zonguldak used 62 camera-trap stations between May 2014 and May 2015. The study accumulated 11,868 camera-trap days, produced 3,653 mammal records, and identified 16 species in Euxine-Colchic deciduous forest and adjoining human-modified land.[d]

Wild boar alone accounted for 1,064 records. That result shows photographic activity at the camera stations, not the number of individual boars in the forest. One animal can trigger a camera more than once, and record frequency is affected by trail placement, movement behaviour, body size, season, and detectability.

Red deer and brown hare were recorded only in the study’s less disturbed inland forest region. Roe deer, brown bear, and wolf were also concentrated there. Golden jackal, hedgehog, wild boar, and badger produced a larger share of their records in the coastal region containing villages, agricultural land, and fragmented forest.

Small mammals on the forest floor

Camera traps placed for medium and large mammals provide little evidence for mice, voles, shrews, and dormice. A separate mark-recapture study in Soğuksu National Park sampled aspen forest, thermophilic deciduous forest, steppe, conifer plantation, and fir forest during 2014 and 2015. It recorded 758 captures across 5,250 trap days.[e]

The largest number of captures came from aspen forest, followed by thermophilic deciduous forest. The result does not mean aspen forest holds the largest small-mammal population in Turkey. It describes one study area, one trapping design, and the seasons sampled.

The bank vole was reported in the paper as Myodes glareolus. Current Mammal Diversity Database treatment uses Clethrionomys glareolus. The white-toothed shrew was published as Crocidura suaveolens, while the current country account lists Crocidura gueldenstaedtii for Turkey. Historical records should retain the study’s original identification while also noting the later taxonomic treatment.

Woodland rodents documented beyond the two focal surveys

A rodent inventory conducted at 33 localities in Zonguldak Province between 2009 and 2016 evaluated 427 specimens from 15 species. The study covered several habitat types, so provincial occurrence should not be treated automatically as a forest-only record. Caucasian squirrel, yellow-necked field mouse, and edible dormouse were the most widely recorded species, occurring at 13, 12, and 9 surveyed localities respectively.[f]

The edible dormouse has also been examined across northern Turkey using genetic and dental-morphology data. The study found geographic phenotypic differentiation along the Black Sea coast and interpreted the pattern in relation to postglacial isolation and forest fragmentation.[h]

Forest-linked bats documented in Turkey

Ground-level camera traps and Sherman traps leave most bats unrecorded. The species below are listed for Turkey by the Mammal Diversity Database and have strong or regular woodland associations in European bat ecology. EUROBATS identifies tree cavities, woodpecker holes, hollow branches, loose bark, old trees, deadwood, canopy gaps, and semi-open mature stands as important forest features for bat roosting and feeding.[g]

These bats form a source-backed forest-linked subset, not a claim that Turkey’s other bat species never use trees or woodland edges. Cave-roosting species may forage in forest, while tree-roosting species may also feed over pasture, wetlands, orchards, or settlements.

Taxonomic changes alter woodland checklists

A forest checklist can change even when no animal has newly arrived or disappeared. A genus may be renamed, a former subspecies may be raised to species level, two names may be synonymized, or a widespread taxon may be divided into regional species.

Sampling gaps across Turkish woodland mammals

No single field method can document the whole woodland community. Camera traps favour medium and large animals moving on the ground. Sherman traps sample only animals small enough to enter them and are sensitive to bait, trap placement, season, and individual behaviour. Bat detectors record calls rather than bodies, and some quiet-calling species are less detectable than open-air hunters.

• Arboreal dormice and squirrels may spend much of their time above ground-level cameras.
• Shrews may be poorly represented by rodent-oriented live traps.
• Moles can remain absent from camera and small-box trap datasets despite occupying suitable soil.
• Bats require acoustic detectors, roost inspection, harp traps, mist nets, or genetic confirmation.
• Otter evidence is often better obtained from tracks, spraints, den surveys, or river cameras.
• Rare carnivores may remain undetected even during long camera deployments.
• Repeated photographs measure recording events, not the number of individual animals.

The absence of lynx, fallow deer, polecat, or another nationally listed mammal from one woodland survey is therefore a local non-detection. It is not evidence that the species is absent from Turkey or from all forests in the same region.

Forest structure supports different mammal groups

Old trees, cavities, loose bark, standing deadwood, and connected canopy provide roost and nesting sites for bats, squirrels, and dormice. Leaf litter, fallen branches, shrubs, fungi, seeds, and ground vegetation support mice, voles, shrews, and their predators. Forest openings can provide feeding areas for deer, wild boar, brown hare, fox, wolf, and bear.

Wooded streams add another mammal layer. Otters depend on aquatic prey and secure banks, while several bats feed above water or follow riparian vegetation. Removing streamside cover can affect a different set of mammals from those affected by the loss of mature upland trees.

Forest continuity also operates at a larger scale. Brown bear, wolf, red deer, roe deer, and lynx move across landscapes that include forest, scrub, pasture, roads, farms, and settlements. Their occurrence cannot be explained by canopy cover alone. Patch size, disturbance, road access, hunting pressure, food availability, and connections between forest blocks can change where records are obtained.

Sources and Verification

1. [a] 2025 General Directorate of Forestry Activity Report — Used for the forest-area figure reported from current forest-management planning data.
2. [b] An updated checklist of the mammals of Türkiye — Used for the 2025 national species total, native and introduced designations, taxonomic discussion, and accepted taxa at publication.
3. [c] Mammal Diversity Database: Turkey — Used for the live country total and current taxonomic names for rodents, insectivores, bats, carnivores, and ungulates.
4. [d] Camera trapping of medium and large-sized mammals in western Black Sea deciduous forests in Turkey — Used for the Zonguldak study area, survey effort, complete species detections, photographic record counts, detection rates, and unresolved marten identifications.
5. [e] Habitat selection of small mammals in a mixed forest in Turkey — Used for live-trapping effort, habitat-specific capture totals, small-mammal composition, and the combined identification of two Apodemus species.
6. [f] Distribution of Rodent Species in Zonguldak Province, Turkey — Used for the 2009–2016 provincial rodent inventory, specimen total, species composition, and locality frequencies.
7. [g] EUROBATS guidance on bat conservation and forest management — Used for the relationship between woodland bats, tree cavities, loose bark, old trees, deadwood, canopy structure, and forest feeding habitat.
8. [h] Morphometric and genetic structure of the edible dormouse: a consequence of forest fragmentation in Turkey — Used for geographic differentiation and forest-fragmentation evidence concerning northern Turkish populations of Glis glis.