European mouflon Harzgerode in 1906, followed by further releases in the Taunus and the Solling. In all cases, the mouflon favoured level or low-lying plains with forest cover and not, as expected, rocky, mountainous areas. Gradually they were mixed with varieties of domestic sheep, especially crossbreeding with the racka. After the European mouflon population declined during the First World War, in the German Reich alone about 2,500 were counted in 1938. After a further decline during the Second World War, the number of European mouflon worldwide in 1954 was only about 4,500. After that, numbers recovered due to careful management and grew
Taxonomy of wheat the fertile crescent of the Near East. All the other species are domesticated. Although relatively few genes control domestication, and wild and domesticated forms are interfertile, wild and domesticated wheats occupy entirely separate habitats. Traditional classification gives more weight to domesticated status. All wild wheats are hulled: they have tough glumes (husks) that tightly enclose the grains. Each "package" of glumes, lemma and palaea, and grain(s) is known as a spikelet. At maturity the rachis (central stalk of the cereal ear) disarticulates, allowing the spikelets to disperse. The first domesticated wheats, einkorn and emmer, were hulled like their wild ancestors,