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

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

#61

Post by pvaldes »

gbraad wrote: post #34
refactor_master wrote: post #18

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…

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.

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

#62

Post by hcfman »

idiotsecant wrote: post #21
danielvf wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

#63

Post by RetroTechie »

the_real_cher wrote: post #13
RetroTechie wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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.

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

#64

Post by RetroTechie »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #41
gbraad wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

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. [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.

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

#65

Post by pvaldes »

warumdarum wrote: post #16

No, because predators follow exponential curves leading to prey collapses during winters where hungry animals will abandon shyness to hunt for humans in suburbs.

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.

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

#66

Post by pvaldes »

yread wrote: post #59
the_real_cher wrote: post #6

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 shee…

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.

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

#67

Post by e40 »

robtro wrote: 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…

And feral pigs… is that a problem in the EU? It’s apparently a huge and growing problem in the USA.

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

#68

Post by micromacrofoot »

nullstyle wrote: post #17
micromacrofoot wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

#69

Post by hcfman »

hcfman wrote: post #8
hcfman wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

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.

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

#70

Post by albedoa »

FpUser wrote: post #29
morkalork wrote: post #22

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.

Oh just they wait. They will be real sorry when this highly improbably event happens.
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