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> Really cool article.

a wolf wrote it.

joking aside the Yellowstone phenomenon gets often cited. We have a long way to go in Europe (cough cough Switzerland, Austria) where the wolf by the rural community is still seen as a huge problem to the way of life (hunting and farming). I wonder if some modern solutions where wolves that are tagged anyway can be combined with trackers on cows/sheep/goats that subscribe to this data, so that the shepherd knows that a wolf is about to approach the herd. The bigger problem in these communities is that hunters have been doing this for generations, I myself come from such a family, my gramps, even my mother my uncle everyone was a hunter. They all believe that the hunter plays an important role in keeping a check on population of deer etc. As Yellowstone has shown reintroducing the wolf hasn't just solved that issue but also brought back types of trees, flowers and biodiversity that was previously lost. All because they allowed apex-predators back to where they were. But try to convince somebody in the countryside about this ... going to be a tough sell.



i'm swiss, i can confirm there is a long way to go here. for instance a nature photographer got arrested by police, got his material confiscated, on sole speculation that he was doing diffamation against hunters. literally treated worse than a terrorist just for just saying wolves and nature are important.

here wolves are highly political fights, to kill or not to kill.

usually they get killed.

i think wolves are just part of the political apparatus here, i have no idea how deep the hunter lobby goes..., but it is a fact that for every government, be it green or far right, the trigger is easy. we don't like wolves here, keep your paw out of our peaceful country.

(if you are a wolf that specializes in oil / food / ore trading, please be welcome in our country! did you know we are famous for chocolate?! you're office is waiting for you , it has a nice view on Zürich's iconic Bahnhofstrasse.)


> joking aside the Yellowstone phenomenon gets often cited. We have a long way to go in Europe (cough cough Switzerland, Austria) where the wolf by the rural community is still seen as a huge problem to the way of life (hunting and farming).

100% the same situation in Scandinavia. Wolves would also probably help with the wild Boar problem in Sweden.

> Many Swedish farmers are affected by wild boar that cultivate arable land and eat crops.

> According to an action plan from the Swedish Farmers' Association, LRF, this involves

> damages of SEK 1.1 billion per year.

https://www.tellerreport.com/news/2020-09-25-wild-boar-a-bil...

> The main threat to wild boars are humans, but sometimes wild boar also fall prey to lynx,

> bears and wolves but only the later is of greater importance. In some areas in Italy for

> example wild boars are the main prey to wolves, but since the distribution of wild boar and

> wolves are not really overlapping in Sweden this has not been demonstrated in Sweden yet. In

> future, if the wolves are spreading southward and wild boars continue to spread up north, we

> may see this happen in Sweden as well.

http://files.webb.uu.se/uploader/271/BIOKand-13-025-Duck-Lov...


> a wolf wrote it

Don't be silly. That's clearly my grandmother.


Attribution is always a problem.


Your saying you are little red riding hood? :-)


And to the southeast, to Croatia and Serbia where for example the beginning and the end of winter in the Orthodox calendar are marked by saints that are called the "wolf apostles".

All traditions related to wolf cults and werewolf stories are more or less related to local people having to deal with wolves as animals on a daily basis.

Or so I've read :).

This landscape of fear is interesting concept.


Guardian dogs. In other parts of the world shepherds have been living with wolves and bears since forever with the help of their companions. These are huge dogs, intelligent but independent. They roam and fend off bears, jackals and wolves and from my own experience, unfortunate hikers and cyclists.

There are many projects currently underway, introducing these dogs to America, Europe and Africa, as an alternative to killing on sight.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangal_Shepherd_Dog https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/blog/kangal-soldier-of-the-s...


We make tens of thousands of shish kebab every week but sheep killed by wolves is a big drama for some reason.

Probably because unlike America this continent doesn't have wild nature anymore just carefully curated,designed and scripted parks.


Shish kebab are money in ranchers' pockets. Wolves are seen as stealing from them.


It's an ongoing fight in Northern Michigan and Wisconsin.


It's a really tough sell in Montana, and there are constantly fighting any wolf populations allowed at all. I'm pretty sure the controlling state government parting is working towards taking the population back to 0 because they believe the only good wolf is a dead wolf.


That's nice and all, but aren't wolves dangerous? How many humans being attacked by wolves is an acceptable number?


Quite simply, no wolves aren’t dangerous. There were 12 wolf attacks from 2002-2020 in Europe and North America: [1]

“In Europe and North America we only found evidence for 12 attacks (with 14 victims), of which 2 (both in North America) were fatal, across a period of 18 years. Considering that there are close to 60.000 wolves in North America and 15.000 in Europe, all sharing space with hun- dreds of millions of people it is apparent that the risks associated with a wolf attack are above zero, but far too low to calculate”

1: https://brage.nina.no/nina-xmlui/bitstream/handle/11250/2729...


Much less dangerous than deer, it seems.


you say that, but let’s swap every deer for a wolf and see where things land! xD




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