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Wolves are reconquering Europe. Can people learn to live with them?

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51–60 of 73 posts

Re: Wolves are reconquering Europe. Can people learn to live with them?

#51
post #46

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…

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).

Re: Wolves are reconquering Europe. Can people learn to live with them?

#52

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

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Re: Wolves are reconquering Europe. Can people learn to live with them?

#53
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

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.

Re: Wolves are reconquering Europe. Can people learn to live with them?

#54
post #31
post #2

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 distan…

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.

Re: Wolves are reconquering Europe. Can people learn to live with them?

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: Wolves are reconquering Europe. Can people learn to live with them?

#56
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.

Re: Wolves are reconquering Europe. Can people learn to live with them?

#57
post #26
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

> 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.

Re: Wolves are reconquering Europe. Can people learn to live with them?

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: Wolves are reconquering Europe. Can people learn to live with them?

#59

Are wolves even a threat? Outside of movies theyre pretty harmless.

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

Re: Wolves are reconquering Europe. Can people learn to live with them?

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

... 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.

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