We have a solar powered thermal local AI wolf detection system that’s been in a field in Belgium for more than 8 months now, monitoring the wolves there. Thermal image motion detection can detection them at much greater distances than PIR sensors and of course in complete darkness.
The biggest barrier at the moment to living with wolves, if you true away the human resistance to the idea, is reliable detection for early warning prevention.
This is not such a hard problem with computer vision at the level that it is these days. We’ve made it more effective by coupling it with thermal imaging camera modules.
Now we just need people willing to want to want to work with such pilot project, which turns out to be a pretty big problem.
However, it’s possible that a few influential success stories can bring change to the situation. But there has to be a start first and certainly when this started to be a problem, anything along the lines of prevention was seen as a barrier towards killing them which is what the solution in many people’s eyes is.
That is a glorified trail camera, really does very little to help people live with wolves. What does is a strict hunting quota; the government decides how many wolves there should be, rather than nature.
And no, it's not a glorified trail camera. Very different.
Everyone wants to kill before trying measures to keep people and their animals apart.
I don't think you can say it does nothing to help people live with wolves because it's not being tried. It's not being tried, because people being convince the only thing that helps is killing everything that requires a bit of effort to live with. I realize it's very human to destroy and kill, but I think we should strive to do better.
Humans have already stolen so much from nature and the animals, don't you think a little effort to do better would be a good thing?
Sure they are. But try mentally reversing the situation. If any other single species occupied and changed the landscape as much as humans they would be viewed by humans as the most horrific plague on earth.
So I'm just a little empathy would be well placed here. A little effort to try and co-exist with the other inhabitants would not be out of place and as a bonus you can think a little better of yourself.
That's a fine attitude for squirrels which are ultimately harmless, but wolves can attack people, although that's somewhat rare, not like bears which attack you every time.
Wikipedia says wolves are more likely to attack humans if they've been living around humans for a while - they learn that humans are viable prey, not that humans are harmless.
Bear attacks depend on the (sub)species. European brown bears are very shy and much less likely to attack people than wolves.
Finnish people traditionally respected bears but were not afraid of them. Historical records mostly tell of two kinds of bear attacks. Either children / old people herding cattle in the forest accidentally got too close to a bear cub, or adult men were hunting bears and something went wrong.
There is a lot not to be proud of about human behavior. Still.. one has to try to be a little positive about there being hope as hopelessness is contagious.
They kill and eat things. Brutally and sometimes primarily for fun. Unless you somehow consider yourself no longer an animal I'm not sure eradicating capable predators is deserving of 'no longer living on this planet'
Cameras do not actively protect people or livestock, it just monitors and retroactively actions are taken. I prefer the German method where they make the wolves fear people.
The systems I developed are. It based on microcontrollers. But secure boot Linux systems. They detect wolves within 2 seconds on pi based version, sub second on the jetson based ones.
Then websocket connected subscribers speak a loud alert to wake the person up and auto load the camera view over the permanently up VPN.
The person monitoring can then verify on how ever many cameras are connected and illicit many different kinds of responses.
This is not a standard wild camera setup. I’m using high resolution 640x512 res thermal modules to see night and day.
Our system is already being used in Greenland for polar bears and has detected bears three times now from a long distance and the safety group were able to chase it away. There it’s monitoring 22 cameras with a single jetson.
And indeed, the idea is very rapid detection and validation and then potentially remote active response. It has all the necessary controls.
Just get proper dogs again to protect the livestock.
I really don't understand how people can't just look at how farmers in areas with wolves handle it and how we handled it in the past.
Eliminating all predators is also not that great then you get tons of hogs and deer etc.
People in other regions are still alive with way more dangerous predators than here in Europe I personally think it's more an education problem that people get way too close to wild animals just have a look at any social media and you see that most people have no basic education about how wild animals should be handled.
They do in Germany as part of a shepherds program. I applaus this, as the issue is a slightly different in the Netherlands; it will otherwise move wolves in close proximity with people. It sounds bad, but those sheeps that have been attacked might have protected from wolves wandering in more urban areas (this is already happening).
Some years ago people also said “Japanese bears are harmless, shy and fear humans” and now the country is experiencing a slowly approaching bear-pocalypse, with bear attacks occurring in densely populated suburbs. I don’t see how wolves in Europe would be uniquely different if it follows the same trajectory.
It is the ignorance or pleasing all attitude in the government that creates these situations. In the Netherlands they have a minority coalition, so they hand the other smaller parties whatever they want to get their vote. And what happens, they allow wolves to attack livestock and pets, as free-roaming wolves are more important than people... Until the day comes that it's not the dog that gets attacked, but a little boy or girl while walking the dog. They have already started to enter the borders of a few cities in the area where I am from in the Netherlands. Rightfully so, German shepherds have mentioned: "we thought the Dutch were smarter", as they allow this to happen without measures in place.
Are you allowed to take precautionary actions, like a weapon or spray? As in Europe that is not even considered/disallowed for the safety of the animal.
I see those nearly daily. some of those are not that little. They've killed dogs and attacked humans. Government as usual does not give a flying fuck. Well I am pretty sure if one of them or their relative gets killed they would instantly declare a war against coyotes.
The average dog is a greater danger to people than the average urban coyote, at least in the US. Mostly because dogs are not afraid of people, and because any moron is allowed to have a dog and train it badly.
Yes and no. In Germany they have a county that at least helps to make the wolves fear people, by actively go after them with dogs, while in the Netherlands people are waiting for the first fatal victim before action will be taken, as currently the animal concerns outweigh those of people. For now, farmers have to pay the price; while they get a small compensation from most governments it will never offset the loss. So yeah, this is a heated topic.
Note: https://youtu.be/hmVowVaWUms about the German shepherd (in Dutch, but CC can help to understand). Just search on YouTube for Wolf Germany or Europe. And yes, the place I am from these wolves have started to enter urban areas (Veluwe).
Are you a farmer speaking out of experience? I can tell you from family that your perception is wrong.
This subsidizing is not a EU standard practice, and not for all sectors of agricultural development. This idea that subsidizing offsets the loss of livestock sounds weird to me, as is the risk of a human attack. Europe is far more densely populated than most other places that have to deal with bears, coyotes or so, plus... You are allowed to take precautions, that we are not; a spray might harm the animal.
The EU has a €300B program directly subsidizing farmers [0]. To quote the wiki page:
The [EAGF] consumes a large part of the general budget of the European Union.
Apparently the overarching CAP program consumes something like 30+% of the budget, so I'd love to know what you consider "heavily subsidized" if this doesn't merit.
Most wolf-attack compensation paid to farmers are government subsidies not EU ones (so on top of EU subsidies if it's not EU subsidies funneled for this purpose somehow).
It's a heated debate because farmers are considered such an important part of historic & cultural identity. And thus have a strong lobby & much public support. This is ignoring their dwindling % contribution to GDP.
Is this, however, because humans rarely encounter wolves? I can see wolves attacking a large man, but can see them picking a kid if he is walking alone to school.
This has happened; not fatally. Last July and August kids have been attacked, involved a 6yo boy; bite marks and abrasions after being dragged. While these kids survived, there is emotional damage. I was attacked by a dog, a bred that is now illegal to own, when I was a kid. And I can tell you that this fear stayed with me till late in adulthood. The encounters have become more regular as places like Belgium, Netherlands are more densely populated or in close proximity to forests. Warthogs have attacked people in my area, but they are not a false and smart like a wolf is. They are a lot more opportunistic in their approach and stealthy. So yes, the number of incidents are rising.
The worst part is, often the problem wolf is known to people (multiple incidents), but there is no permit to deal with it, or just difficult even when permit is granted. There is no real plan for this
No, because predators follow exponential curves leading to prey collapses during winters where hungry animals will abandon shyness to hunt for humans in suburbs.
This is not the same for places like the Veluwe and Utrecht in the Netherlands, where wolves have attacked people already. They do not fear people as much...
Forest rich areas are close to urban areas, and they have been spotted in border regions already.
Wikipedia says wolves don't habitually attack humans but they will, and the more contact they have with humans, the more likely they are to attack them (they learn that humans are not wolf predators which makes them viable targets)
The place with the healthiest wolves population in the entire EU is a small hills area on Spain called "mountains of the snake". Spectacular place with extensive oak forests, a big water reservoir with boats and rocky islands, and even a sand beach. People adapted and definitely can live with them. They even can spot the benefits.
Most of the people living there are elders. People roam alone the shady paths of the oak forests to pick mushrooms. Shepherds with 300 animals don't lost a single one by wolves. This place has one of the healthiest deer population with bigger trophies in the country, because the wolves. Many young families could make a live here from nature tourism, also because the wolves. Absolutely spectacular place. Until it was left burn entirely a few years ago in a very suspicious chain of events
And... guess what?. No one man, women or little child attacked for a century. More people are killed by hunters each year than by wolves. More people are maimed by bulls and cows with calves. The smaller subspecies of Iberian wolves don't want to hang with us or to be near us in any way.
As I said before, this is the healthiest wolf population in the entire European Union [1], the place with a greater density of wolves. To add context the Romanian Carpathians have 2.35 wolves/100 Km2. Sweden has one single location with 3.3 wolves by 100 Km2 and between 0.5 and 1.5 wolves in the rest of Norway plus Sweden
Well. This Spanish place has 5-7 wolves by each 100 Km2. This alone proves that nobody is hunting wolves unofficially here [2].
And is not just a place with a lot of wolves, is a place where the deer populations flourish and thrive incredibly well [3]. The wolves are more valuable alive and don't attack humans at all. So, it can be done.
---------------
[1] Chernobyl could be the only part of the European continent with more wolves by 100 Km 2, but is not a place really inhabited by humans and is not in the EU.
[2] The species is managed as a game resource. Some wolves are auctioned when needed but respecting the hierarchy on the packs.
[3] Moreover, after the place was burnt, the deer started to die massively by diseases until predators population were stabilized again.
Fun fact: Ireland used to be referred to as "wolf-land" by the English because the island was overrun with wolves. The last wolf was killed here in 1786, now we're one of the only places in Europe with no wolves, apart from a handful of European ones in captivity.
Oh there no denying that they are a threat to live stock that are not protected. And sometimes even when they, as the sometimes can get over fences.
In the Netherlands there are 14 wolf packs and 144 wolves in a geographical small area where the surrounding farms are often full of a lot sheep.
But it’s also easy to imagine that if you can become aware of the presents of wolves sufficiently early enough and reliably enough before they attack your animals then you have a chance to prevent an attack. And if you prevent enough attacks it becomes maybe harder than sticking to natural prey.
Wolves don't like taking risks. Interacting with humans is definitely risky. Detecting wolves reliably early and responding, either in person if that can be done quick enough, or setting off responses, ideally followed up by a human visit could well result in the wolves avoiding that farm in any case. The extend to which this can work in practice is something that needs to be determine through research and pilots. Wolves are very smart, so if tech is going to be able to help here, then the tech has to be very capable. The start with pilots and research two elements are needed. People with tech, but also people in the affected areas with a willingness to collaborate.
The current highly polarized environment is throwing road blocks against such collaboration.
The current situation is such that owners are unaware of the presence of wolves at their borders, so there is currently also not a lot of perceived risk associated with attacking live stock. A useful goal is to start to change that. And the people who read hacker news I'm sure that think of many ways to change the status quo. My system is one example.
Sadly, a lot time went by without trying these methods. None the less, one should try.
I the past I have offered free equipment to people to test who had been publicly expressing concern about the arrival of the wolf but they would not accept it.
So far these packs are monitored, but they contain problem wolves that have been known to attack people. Examples in Utrecht and veluwe, and it takes just a little to learn from those; the issue is that the wolves do not see people as a threat. So far there have been incidents, like bite marks, until they will attack in a group. They should adopt the German method to scare them away proactively
Only two occasions though out of more than 60. All the other times they were just traveling through.
And I also don’t believe those two times they were a threat to the horses, more likely just curious. But I didn’t have the full visibility enough to be sure as there was just one camera. So I called the farmer to be in the safe side.
Now I think there are no more wolves there. It’s been weeks since Insaw them. They have either dispersed or killed on the roads.
Most are not. "Problem wolves" do show up sometimes. In Netherlands we had "Bram" GW3237m. First, he just followed people seemingly unafraid. Then he attacked a jogger (who ran away) and a 6-year old boy (grabbed him by the chest and tried to pull him in the bushes, bystanders hit the wolf with sticks so he ran away). Judge in Utrecht gave an order to shoot the wolf dead, which was done and now it's back to just sheep being bitten.
I've heard from my farmer friends that not all sheep declared to have been bitten by wolves have in fact been bitten by wolves. There is some insurance fraud with that. Not sure how widespread
Suddenly statistics will show that no sheep or cows die anymore by illness, accidents, old age or pregnancy gone bad, after government starts paying for wolf attacks in some area.
Every single time, farmers will soon realize that paying for medicines for an old cow is a worse deal than borrowing a mastiff from a friend and being paid. People tried to be paid for the bony rests of a barbecue. (Yep. really). People tried to be paid twice or thrice for the same cow, just moving the corpse around. For some reason wolves always start eating the most yummy parts of the cows first: the plastic identification tags in the ears.
In Spain some farmers never ever sold a cow or paid taxes. Their entire activity for decades is: buying foals in a province by 50 euros, moving to another and leaving then alone in isolated places known to have wolves, to cash 150 euros of our taxes by each foal. Rinse and repeat. Ka-ching.
> Are wolves even a threat? Outside of movies theyre pretty harmless.
Are you kidding? Humans often had a fear of wolves throughout history. And rightfully so.
But the reverse is also true. Hence wolves tend to stay away from people so encounters are rare. But where not, human-wolf close encounters can end deadly sometimes. Even for the humans (especially children).
1. Wolves were basically exterminated in the continental US for most of the 20th century
2. There were still deaths from wolf attacks in North America during that time
What are you talking about? There's tons of wolves in my county. They aren't 'basically exterminated' at all. And there's zero human attacks. Lots and lots of cow attacks though.
Yellowstone park rangers killed the last wolves there in 1926, and by the middle of the 20th century, the total population in the Lower 48 had been reduced to a few hundred in Minnesota and Michigan.
"The country with the most extensive historical record is France, where nearly 10,000 fatal attacks were documented from 1200 to 1920.[1][2][3] A study by the Norwegian Institute of Nature Research showed that there were eight fatal attacks in Europe and Russia, three in North America, and more than 200 in south Asia in the half-century up to 2002.[4] The updated edition of the study revealed 498 attacks on humans worldwide for the years 2002 to 2020, with 25 deaths, including 14 attributed to rabies."
As another commenter noted, this is most likely due to wolf populations decimated by hunting and/or habitat destruction.
In North America, those numbers make sense as eg. US is relatively sparsely populated compared to other developed countries. And most wolves will reside in areas less-populated still, and/or national parks. So encounters are rare. US != rest of world.
So it's in same order of shark attacks. Which is not how most humans die.
Personally I'm not scared of wolves. Maybe throw some stones at one if encounted, to keep it wary of humans. Rather than try & be friendly, and have it attack a child later on.
But don't be naive about them. They're among the biggest canines, and not used to / bred to be human-friendly. Give them space.
Wikipedia suggests hundreds of deaths in various regions around the world - more common in the past, which suggests, I think, more wolves = more deaths.
Never fear. We have the technology to help people live with wolves.
https://wildlifesecurityinnovations.com/projects/wolves-belg...
With the most wolf videos here.
https://youtube.com/@hcftube1
We have a solar powered thermal local AI wolf detection system that’s been in a field in Belgium for more than 8 months now, monitoring the wolves there. Thermal image motion detection can detection them at much greater distances than PIR sensors and of course in complete darkness.
The biggest barrier at the moment to living with wolves, if you true away the human resistance to the idea, is reliable detection for early warning prevention.
This is not such a hard problem with computer vision at the level that it is these days. We’ve made it more effective by coupling it with thermal imaging camera modules.
Now we just need people willing to want to want to work with such pilot project, which turns out to be a pretty big problem.
However, it’s possible that a few influential success stories can bring change to the situation. But there has to be a start first and certainly when this started to be a problem, anything along the lines of prevention was seen as a barrier towards killing them which is what the solution in many people’s eyes is.
That is a glorified trail camera, really does very little to help people live with wolves. What does is a strict hunting quota; the government decides how many wolves there should be, rather than nature.
There's the killing again.
And no, it's not a glorified trail camera. Very different.
Everyone wants to kill before trying measures to keep people and their animals apart.
I don't think you can say it does nothing to help people live with wolves because it's not being tried. It's not being tried, because people being convince the only thing that helps is killing everything that requires a bit of effort to live with. I realize it's very human to destroy and kill, but I think we should strive to do better.
Humans have already stolen so much from nature and the animals, don't you think a little effort to do better would be a good thing?
> There's the killing again.
Do you not understand how ecosystems work? Or how populations of predator/prey are in various (usually) oscillatory states?
> Humans have already stolen so much from nature and the animals
I'm confused, are you saying humans are somehow not part of nature?
Sure they are. But try mentally reversing the situation. If any other single species occupied and changed the landscape as much as humans they would be viewed by humans as the most horrific plague on earth.
So I'm just a little empathy would be well placed here. A little effort to try and co-exist with the other inhabitants would not be out of place and as a bonus you can think a little better of yourself.
A lot of people are like that when dealing with nature. Oh I don't want squirrels in my backyard, let me put some poison...
We really don't deserve a place on this planet
That's a fine attitude for squirrels which are ultimately harmless, but wolves can attack people, although that's somewhat rare, not like bears which attack you every time.
Wikipedia says wolves are more likely to attack humans if they've been living around humans for a while - they learn that humans are viable prey, not that humans are harmless.
Bear attacks depend on the (sub)species. European brown bears are very shy and much less likely to attack people than wolves.
Finnish people traditionally respected bears but were not afraid of them. Historical records mostly tell of two kinds of bear attacks. Either children / old people herding cattle in the forest accidentally got too close to a bear cub, or adult men were hunting bears and something went wrong.
We have systems in Finland as well. We have detected Lynx a number of times. Later this year some systems will move to bear country.
Climate change also kills people and we don't do anything about it
There is a lot not to be proud of about human behavior. Still.. one has to try to be a little positive about there being hope as hopelessness is contagious.
same with mosquitoes, let's just spray or fog and kill all the other bugs too... including ones that kill mosquitos
I’ll argue mozzies are responsible for more suffering than humans any day of the week. They need to go. Lets just get our targeting good enough.
the good news is that if we can't figure out how to target them specifically soon, we'll have already killed all the side effects
... What do you think wolves do all day?
They mostly sleep and play all day. As anybody with a chonky dog at home can confirm.
And they provide premium ecological services all night that would be really expensive to cover by ourselves.
They kill and eat things. Brutally and sometimes primarily for fun. Unless you somehow consider yourself no longer an animal I'm not sure eradicating capable predators is deserving of 'no longer living on this planet'
Cameras do not actively protect people or livestock, it just monitors and retroactively actions are taken. I prefer the German method where they make the wolves fear people.
https://youtu.be/hmVowVaWUms
Yes. Old camera do that.
The systems I developed are. It based on microcontrollers. But secure boot Linux systems. They detect wolves within 2 seconds on pi based version, sub second on the jetson based ones.
Then websocket connected subscribers speak a loud alert to wake the person up and auto load the camera view over the permanently up VPN.
The person monitoring can then verify on how ever many cameras are connected and illicit many different kinds of responses.
This is not a standard wild camera setup. I’m using high resolution 640x512 res thermal modules to see night and day.
Our system is already being used in Greenland for polar bears and has detected bears three times now from a long distance and the safety group were able to chase it away. There it’s monitoring 22 cameras with a single jetson.
And indeed, the idea is very rapid detection and validation and then potentially remote active response. It has all the necessary controls.
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Just get proper dogs again to protect the livestock.
I really don't understand how people can't just look at how farmers in areas with wolves handle it and how we handled it in the past.
Eliminating all predators is also not that great then you get tons of hogs and deer etc.
People in other regions are still alive with way more dangerous predators than here in Europe I personally think it's more an education problem that people get way too close to wild animals just have a look at any social media and you see that most people have no basic education about how wild animals should be handled.
They do in Germany as part of a shepherds program. I applaus this, as the issue is a slightly different in the Netherlands; it will otherwise move wolves in close proximity with people. It sounds bad, but those sheeps that have been attacked might have protected from wolves wandering in more urban areas (this is already happening).
And feral pigs… is that a problem in the EU? It’s apparently a huge and growing problem in the USA.
Some years ago people also said “Japanese bears are harmless, shy and fear humans” and now the country is experiencing a slowly approaching bear-pocalypse, with bear attacks occurring in densely populated suburbs. I don’t see how wolves in Europe would be uniquely different if it follows the same trajectory.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj41vn9q81ko
It is the ignorance or pleasing all attitude in the government that creates these situations. In the Netherlands they have a minority coalition, so they hand the other smaller parties whatever they want to get their vote. And what happens, they allow wolves to attack livestock and pets, as free-roaming wolves are more important than people... Until the day comes that it's not the dog that gets attacked, but a little boy or girl while walking the dog. They have already started to enter the borders of a few cities in the area where I am from in the Netherlands. Rightfully so, German shepherds have mentioned: "we thought the Dutch were smarter", as they allow this to happen without measures in place.
This is oversimplification of a complex issue. AKA populism. When in doubt, ask science about the whole picture.
> free-roaming wolves are more important than people
I'm sure that nobody said that, ever, in the Netherlands.
And in Canada we've been having a moment with wolves littler cousin:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/child-bit-coyote-whit...
https://ottawacitizen.com/news/orleans-park-closed-coyote-at...
Are you allowed to take precautionary actions, like a weapon or spray? As in Europe that is not even considered/disallowed for the safety of the animal.
I see those nearly daily. some of those are not that little. They've killed dogs and attacked humans. Government as usual does not give a flying fuck. Well I am pretty sure if one of them or their relative gets killed they would instantly declare a war against coyotes.
The average dog is a greater danger to people than the average urban coyote, at least in the US. Mostly because dogs are not afraid of people, and because any moron is allowed to have a dog and train it badly.
Oh just they wait. They will be real sorry when this highly improbably event happens.
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Yes and no. In Germany they have a county that at least helps to make the wolves fear people, by actively go after them with dogs, while in the Netherlands people are waiting for the first fatal victim before action will be taken, as currently the animal concerns outweigh those of people. For now, farmers have to pay the price; while they get a small compensation from most governments it will never offset the loss. So yeah, this is a heated topic.
Note: https://youtu.be/hmVowVaWUms about the German shepherd (in Dutch, but CC can help to understand). Just search on YouTube for Wolf Germany or Europe. And yes, the place I am from these wolves have started to enter urban areas (Veluwe).
A healthy, non-rabid wolf killing a human is way less likely than being killed by a lightning strike.
Farmers are also heavily subsidized in Europe.
Are you a farmer speaking out of experience? I can tell you from family that your perception is wrong.
This subsidizing is not a EU standard practice, and not for all sectors of agricultural development. This idea that subsidizing offsets the loss of livestock sounds weird to me, as is the risk of a human attack. Europe is far more densely populated than most other places that have to deal with bears, coyotes or so, plus... You are allowed to take precautions, that we are not; a spray might harm the animal.
The EU has a €300B program directly subsidizing farmers [0]. To quote the wiki page:
Apparently the overarching CAP program consumes something like 30+% of the budget, so I'd love to know what you consider "heavily subsidized" if this doesn't merit.[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Agricultural_Guarante...
Most wolf-attack compensation paid to farmers are government subsidies not EU ones (so on top of EU subsidies if it's not EU subsidies funneled for this purpose somehow).
It's a heated debate because farmers are considered such an important part of historic & cultural identity. And thus have a strong lobby & much public support. This is ignoring their dwindling % contribution to GDP.
Is this, however, because humans rarely encounter wolves? I can see wolves attacking a large man, but can see them picking a kid if he is walking alone to school.
This has happened; not fatally. Last July and August kids have been attacked, involved a 6yo boy; bite marks and abrasions after being dragged. While these kids survived, there is emotional damage. I was attacked by a dog, a bred that is now illegal to own, when I was a kid. And I can tell you that this fear stayed with me till late in adulthood. The encounters have become more regular as places like Belgium, Netherlands are more densely populated or in close proximity to forests. Warthogs have attacked people in my area, but they are not a false and smart like a wolf is. They are a lot more opportunistic in their approach and stealthy. So yes, the number of incidents are rising.
https://www.rtvutrecht.nl/nieuws/3929221/jongetje-6-dat-bos-...
The worst part is, often the problem wolf is known to people (multiple incidents), but there is no permit to deal with it, or just difficult even when permit is granted. There is no real plan for this
No, because predators follow exponential curves leading to prey collapses during winters where hungry animals will abandon shyness to hunt for humans in suburbs.
I live in an extremely rural county. There are plenty of wolves here. None of them hunt for humans. Ever.
This is not the same for places like the Veluwe and Utrecht in the Netherlands, where wolves have attacked people already. They do not fear people as much...
Forest rich areas are close to urban areas, and they have been spotted in border regions already.
Wikipedia says wolves don't habitually attack humans but they will, and the more contact they have with humans, the more likely they are to attack them (they learn that humans are not wolf predators which makes them viable targets)
The place with the healthiest wolves population in the entire EU is a small hills area on Spain called "mountains of the snake". Spectacular place with extensive oak forests, a big water reservoir with boats and rocky islands, and even a sand beach. People adapted and definitely can live with them. They even can spot the benefits.
Most of the people living there are elders. People roam alone the shady paths of the oak forests to pick mushrooms. Shepherds with 300 animals don't lost a single one by wolves. This place has one of the healthiest deer population with bigger trophies in the country, because the wolves. Many young families could make a live here from nature tourism, also because the wolves. Absolutely spectacular place. Until it was left burn entirely a few years ago in a very suspicious chain of events
And... guess what?. No one man, women or little child attacked for a century. More people are killed by hunters each year than by wolves. More people are maimed by bulls and cows with calves. The smaller subspecies of Iberian wolves don't want to hang with us or to be near us in any way.
So much text and yet something in that story suspends the curves and the disbelief, the locals hunt the wulfs unofficially, right?
Trust me, I can write longer texts :-)
As I said before, this is the healthiest wolf population in the entire European Union [1], the place with a greater density of wolves. To add context the Romanian Carpathians have 2.35 wolves/100 Km2. Sweden has one single location with 3.3 wolves by 100 Km2 and between 0.5 and 1.5 wolves in the rest of Norway plus Sweden
Well. This Spanish place has 5-7 wolves by each 100 Km2. This alone proves that nobody is hunting wolves unofficially here [2].
And is not just a place with a lot of wolves, is a place where the deer populations flourish and thrive incredibly well [3]. The wolves are more valuable alive and don't attack humans at all. So, it can be done.
---------------
[1] Chernobyl could be the only part of the European continent with more wolves by 100 Km 2, but is not a place really inhabited by humans and is not in the EU.
[2] The species is managed as a game resource. Some wolves are auctioned when needed but respecting the hierarchy on the packs.
[3] Moreover, after the place was burnt, the deer started to die massively by diseases until predators population were stabilized again.
Fun fact: Ireland used to be referred to as "wolf-land" by the English because the island was overrun with wolves. The last wolf was killed here in 1786, now we're one of the only places in Europe with no wolves, apart from a handful of European ones in captivity.
Highly recommend the book 'Of Wolves and Men' by Barry Lopez
outside of nature preserves, all species that threaten humans should be exterminated with extreme prejudice.
I don't feel your proposal to exterminate all dogs will be popular.
Start with humans
If they keep writing articles about this, eventually nobody will believe them.
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy_Who_Cried_Wolf
Are wolves even a threat? Outside of movies theyre pretty harmless.
Oh there no denying that they are a threat to live stock that are not protected. And sometimes even when they, as the sometimes can get over fences.
In the Netherlands there are 14 wolf packs and 144 wolves in a geographical small area where the surrounding farms are often full of a lot sheep.
But it’s also easy to imagine that if you can become aware of the presents of wolves sufficiently early enough and reliably enough before they attack your animals then you have a chance to prevent an attack. And if you prevent enough attacks it becomes maybe harder than sticking to natural prey.
Wolves don't like taking risks. Interacting with humans is definitely risky. Detecting wolves reliably early and responding, either in person if that can be done quick enough, or setting off responses, ideally followed up by a human visit could well result in the wolves avoiding that farm in any case. The extend to which this can work in practice is something that needs to be determine through research and pilots. Wolves are very smart, so if tech is going to be able to help here, then the tech has to be very capable. The start with pilots and research two elements are needed. People with tech, but also people in the affected areas with a willingness to collaborate.
The current highly polarized environment is throwing road blocks against such collaboration.
The current situation is such that owners are unaware of the presence of wolves at their borders, so there is currently also not a lot of perceived risk associated with attacking live stock. A useful goal is to start to change that. And the people who read hacker news I'm sure that think of many ways to change the status quo. My system is one example.
Sadly, a lot time went by without trying these methods. None the less, one should try.
I the past I have offered free equipment to people to test who had been publicly expressing concern about the arrival of the wolf but they would not accept it.
But maybe that can still change.
So far these packs are monitored, but they contain problem wolves that have been known to attack people. Examples in Utrecht and veluwe, and it takes just a little to learn from those; the issue is that the wolves do not see people as a threat. So far there have been incidents, like bite marks, until they will attack in a group. They should adopt the German method to scare them away proactively
My system has on two occasions alerted my wolves showing an interest in a field of horses instead of just travelling by.
Both times I alerted the farmer who went out in his car and then a little while later they dispersed.
Only two occasions though out of more than 60. All the other times they were just traveling through.
And I also don’t believe those two times they were a threat to the horses, more likely just curious. But I didn’t have the full visibility enough to be sure as there was just one camera. So I called the farmer to be in the safe side.
Now I think there are no more wolves there. It’s been weeks since Insaw them. They have either dispersed or killed on the roads.
Most are not. "Problem wolves" do show up sometimes. In Netherlands we had "Bram" GW3237m. First, he just followed people seemingly unafraid. Then he attacked a jogger (who ran away) and a 6-year old boy (grabbed him by the chest and tried to pull him in the bushes, bystanders hit the wolf with sticks so he ran away). Judge in Utrecht gave an order to shoot the wolf dead, which was done and now it's back to just sheep being bitten.
I've heard from my farmer friends that not all sheep declared to have been bitten by wolves have in fact been bitten by wolves. There is some insurance fraud with that. Not sure how widespread
Extremely widespread.
Suddenly statistics will show that no sheep or cows die anymore by illness, accidents, old age or pregnancy gone bad, after government starts paying for wolf attacks in some area.
Every single time, farmers will soon realize that paying for medicines for an old cow is a worse deal than borrowing a mastiff from a friend and being paid. People tried to be paid for the bony rests of a barbecue. (Yep. really). People tried to be paid twice or thrice for the same cow, just moving the corpse around. For some reason wolves always start eating the most yummy parts of the cows first: the plastic identification tags in the ears.
In Spain some farmers never ever sold a cow or paid taxes. Their entire activity for decades is: buying foals in a province by 50 euros, moving to another and leaving then alone in isolated places known to have wolves, to cash 150 euros of our taxes by each foal. Rinse and repeat. Ka-ching.
My grandmother would tell me how her mom was terrified of wolves in her small village. It was a true problem back in the day
> Are wolves even a threat? Outside of movies theyre pretty harmless.
Are you kidding? Humans often had a fear of wolves throughout history. And rightfully so.
But the reverse is also true. Hence wolves tend to stay away from people so encounters are rare. But where not, human-wolf close encounters can end deadly sometimes. Even for the humans (especially children).
Looks like zero documented death by wolves in the entirety of the 20th century in the contiguous North America.
1. Wolves were basically exterminated in the continental US for most of the 20th century 2. There were still deaths from wolf attacks in North America during that time
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wolf_attacks_in_North_...
What are you talking about? There's tons of wolves in my county. They aren't 'basically exterminated' at all. And there's zero human attacks. Lots and lots of cow attacks though.
If I recall correctly, Yellowstone national park has around 8 wolf packs. Whereas the Netherlands 14. That's pretty absurd!
Looking the other way for a really long time results in crazy situations.
Yellowstone park rangers killed the last wolves there in 1926, and by the middle of the 20th century, the total population in the Lower 48 had been reduced to a few hundred in Minnesota and Michigan.
https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/historyculture/wolf-managemen...
This map shows how now there are nearly 7,000 in the contiguous states of the USA:
https://nywolf.org/learn/u-s-wolf-populations/
Seems like you didn't read the Wikipedia article:
"The country with the most extensive historical record is France, where nearly 10,000 fatal attacks were documented from 1200 to 1920.[1][2][3] A study by the Norwegian Institute of Nature Research showed that there were eight fatal attacks in Europe and Russia, three in North America, and more than 200 in south Asia in the half-century up to 2002.[4] The updated edition of the study revealed 498 attacks on humans worldwide for the years 2002 to 2020, with 25 deaths, including 14 attributed to rabies."
As another commenter noted, this is most likely due to wolf populations decimated by hunting and/or habitat destruction.
In North America, those numbers make sense as eg. US is relatively sparsely populated compared to other developed countries. And most wolves will reside in areas less-populated still, and/or national parks. So encounters are rare. US != rest of world.
So it's in same order of shark attacks. Which is not how most humans die.
Personally I'm not scared of wolves. Maybe throw some stones at one if encounted, to keep it wary of humans. Rather than try & be friendly, and have it attack a child later on.
But don't be naive about them. They're among the biggest canines, and not used to / bred to be human-friendly. Give them space.
Wikipedia suggests hundreds of deaths in various regions around the world - more common in the past, which suggests, I think, more wolves = more deaths.
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