Bison and wolf populations are reviving in parts of Europe | Hacker News Reader

Bison and wolf populations are reviving in parts of Europe

bbc.com

72 pointsHooke65 comments

If this interests you, I strongly recommend watching Seven Worlds, One Planet episode 5 [0], which features grey wolves hunting in a village in Italy at night [1], filmed with thermal cameras. It is pretty incredible.

[0] - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000bqjg

[1] - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07v21x9

Only works in the UK.

I figured the HN crowd was savvy enough to VPN around that, but regardless, I highly recommend purchasing the series. It will not disappoint.

A small taste of what it's like to browse US-only links from the rest of the world, perhaps? The clever reader will not find their defences impenetrable.

The article mentions the need for "habitat corridors" so wild animals can move "freely" to find new mating/hunting grounds. Apparently, Poland has relatively well developed network of corridors across the entire country: http://mapa.korytarze.pl/index_en.html

What about Germany?

Germany have similar things though I do not know of a general nature corridor project. There are rather project specific corridors i.e for wildcat (https://www.bund.net/fileadmin/user_upload_bund/bilder/wildk...) or the mentioned german green belt. These are smaller than the thing you link in Poland, however at least the green belt program is an initiative for almost 100% natural reserve (i.e no agriculture or forestry at all) in that area which I believe most other corridors are not. Also, there are lots of local projects to protect old tree alleys along smaller streets etc. that serve a similar purpose.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Green_Belt

The former wall left behind such a corridor. There is an interesting 99% Invisible episode about it.

Obviously very different conditions than Europe, but I've been following the "Bison Belong" campaign for a while, that reintroduced bison to Banff National Park in Alberta.

There's a good overview from the CBC: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/bison-buffalo-spiritu... - and a series of ongoing updates from the Park Service: https://www.pc.gc.ca/en/pn-np/ab/banff/info/gestion-manageme...

If interested in the Earth before humans exploded onto the scene, I recommend The Once and Future Earth by JB MacKinnon. http://www.jbmackinnon.com/books.html

I had no idea what we'd lost -- about 90%. North America had more large animals than Africa. Sailing ships in the middle of the Atlantic would grind to a halt from the density of fish. Whales as far as the eye could see all day. Beautifully written.

Sorry, ships would grind to a halt? I find it very difficult to imagine the physics that would make that possible as opposed to the fish simply shifting apart, and I googled for a while and was not able to find any corroboration. Do you have some links on that?

I believe its probably like this quote:

> and around 1600 English fishing captains still reported cod shoals "so thick by the shore that we hardly have been able to row a boat through them."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cod_fishing_in_Newfoundland

I did a couple video essays on the book that quote that passage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLAvBiols2Y and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4NZdciDozI.

The passage about the fish comes 45 seconds in to the first video in a NY Times quote from it, then the quote in context from the book at 5:15, though I recommend watching both videos and reading the book whole.

> The Once and Future Earth by JB MacKinnon.

The title is actually "The Once and Future World". I find it fascinating that the two similar titles create very different expectations in my mind. Maybe it's just my own cognitive associations, but 'world' makes me think of wider implications (eg social, political, environmental) while 'earth' seems more scientific (eg natural processes). Someone might say "look at the world around you" but not "look at the earth around you." In French, 'tout le monde' translates literally to "all the world" but is used to mean 'everybody' -- and specifically, humans.

> Sailing ships in the middle of the Atlantic would grind to a halt from the density of fish.

This seems absurd. How could fish survive in such conditions?

European (especially British) "rewilding" "politics" is still in pretty early stages of maturity. Some of the language in this article is kind of demonstrative of this.

"* This method of conservation aims to let large areas of land return to wilderness – in other words, a state of zero human intervention.*"

This is quite clearly hopelessly idealistic. Robust ecosystems that sustain macrofauna are achievable (and necessary, IMO) but "untouched" is not. That sort of idealism is not a problem, but it does set up some issues in terms of getting everyone on board.

Large grazers, bears, wolves, even lynx come into conflict with humans. This is reality. That conflict can be managed and mitigated such that we coexist, but we need to develop a models and cultures that allow this. Scottish farmers don't want wolves. They're not going to come on board with a naive effort. Even lynx are a tough sell, but it's a better place to start than wolves.

I'm actually optimistic though. Despite some naive gaffs (especially in the UK & Germany), there's a genuine public interest growing. Birds of prey are back. Cyanide is a cultural faux pas.

We should look east and west for ideas. Eastern Europe, and obviously Russia have a continuous culture of coexisting with large and potentially dangerous animals. Americans and Canadians have had some great successes reversing exterpations.

George Monbiot has been very influential, and I like his book, but he is a hard liner. He draws heavily on the Yellowstone wolf reintroduction. That's a fine example, but I think it has led to an overly idealistic perspective. A large, pristine and remote park isn't the only way and its probably unrealistic in most of western europe.

Most people live in cities, which makes them think of wolves as a cute, awesome, protect-at-all-cost animal with no downsides. The farmers are in the minority, which means the problem has to become pretty bad to get the majority of the public on their side.

Wolves will eat your children if they feel bold enough, it's not just about livestock. There's a reason they feature so prominently in folklore.

So will people. And they too have their place in folklore:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gretel_%26_Hansel

not to mention blood libel:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel

Here's a list, not sure if complete, of wolf attacks (worldwide): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wolf_attacks

Compare it with 1,494 child homicides in the United States alone just in 2008 and decide for yourself which species is a bigger threat to your children.

I heard one number in the discussion in Germany (where in some areas the wolves discussion runs wild) which I found interesting: The number of people killed by wolves in Germany in recent years is zero, the number of people killed by dogs is around 3-4 per year.

The farmers can get shepherd dogs - a solution proven by millennia - and thus get the problem solved satisfactory to all the sides.

Though these days i'd bet that the modern farmers (which are mostly corporations and thus arent able to handle real dogs) would be more probable to get cloud wired Boston Dynamics style platform based systems as-a-Service with wolf/cow discriminating AI and armed with something like "Area Denial".

The majority of the public might not be enough in a democracy, depending on the political structure. A passionate and engaged minority can stop something that a majority passively approves of, plus there are issues of regional control that might make it difficult for an urban majority to dictate policy in rural areas.

Except the passionate minority here are the environmentalists who will put up huge billboards with appeals to emotion to stop a heartless law from killing poor innocent wild animals.

Most people I know think of wolves as the bigger, meaner brothers of coyotes, which are definitely a concern for anyone with a pet in much of the west and east coast (the latter of which now have dog-wolf-coyote hybrids...).

Wildlife is generally not considered a concern in some parts of Europe.

As in, I'm not sure you could get yourself killed by the local wild fauna in Germany if you actively tried.

I found a listicle claiming to contain the 10 most toxic animals, and it's basically a "don't eat this one, that thing can kill you if you're both extremely allergic and unlucky, this snake is technically venomous but good luck getting it to actually bite you and if it does it's easily treated" etc.

First, you'd have to find something dangerous (like the one single bear), then you'd have to convince it to attack you instead of just running away. Your best bet is probably actively looking for a group of boar at night and trying to piss them off.

>This is quite clearly hopelessly idealistic. Robust ecosystems that sustain macrofauna are achievable (and necessary, IMO) but "untouched" is not. That sort of idealism is not a problem, but it does set up some issues in terms of getting everyone on board.

>Large grazers, bears, wolves, even lynx come into conflict with humans. This is reality. That conflict can be managed and mitigated such that we coexist, but we need to develop a models and cultures that allow this. Scottish farmers don't want wolves. They're not going to come on board with a naive effort. Even lynx are a tough sell, but it's a better place to start than wolves

>Americans and Canadians have had some great successes reversing exterpations.

One of the more high profile examples in the last ten-fifteen years are the wolf populations in Yellowstone.

https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/nature/wolf-restoration.htm

One of the biggest issues they faced and maybe still do are conflicts between ranchers, farmers and hunters outside the border of the park. To the point where people would camp just outside the park with rifles and wait for any that would stray over the border.

Cattle ranchers in the area were the biggest opponents to the reintroduction, they also already deal with brucellosis issues because of the bison in the park, likewise, the bison in the park have a brucellosis problem because of the cattle ranches.

It took years of negotiations with landowners in the area, a lot of enforcement for poaching and constant tracking and population studies on the wolves themselves to get the success they had.

> We should look east and west for ideas. Eastern Europe, and obviously Russia have a continuous culture of coexisting with large and potentially dangerous animals.

Eastern Europe and especially Russia are rather a lot less densely populated than Western Europe and that factor dominates all others when it comes to coexistence between humans and wild animals.

Given the title, I thought this was about reintroducing Aurochs through some amazing feat of modern science... It is not, it's about wolves and wisents (european bison).

Still worthwhile, but not as cool as the title pretends it'll be.

During my apprenticeship my final exam project was to write OxPro. A breeding database for the local aurochs breeding association.

edit: I had to check if it's still around. https://www.aueroxen.de/oxpro-2/

Those are just odd cows.

Pretty interesting story about Aurochs: apparently two brothers in Germany both ran programs to "back breed" the Auroch in the 1920s. One brother, Lutz Heck, eventually became a Nazi and his program became an official Nazi program. After an attempt to reintroduce some animals into German forests, he and Hermann Goering eventually went on a hunting expedition together for them. Heinz Heck, the other brother was imprisoned at Dachau. The result of his program is the current breed of cattle known as "Heck cattle"[0]. He was also responsible for the reintroduction of European Bison into the wild.

There are several other programs [1] that are attempting to reintroduce Aurochs, through a variety of methods.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heck_cattle

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurochs#Breeding_of_aurochs-li...

In Poland we had quite large population of wild animals. It's estimated that we have population of over 2.000 wolves, they need large territories so it's natural to migrate outside the borders. Hopefully they will be protected everywhere at same level. I never heard here about threat to humans (we as a nation spend a lot time in forests for mushroom and berries picking, recreation, etc) beside rumours and fake news ignited by hunters - they want to end strict wolf protection to be able to hunt for them.

Wolves were always here in Poland, and now they are already on most polish territory, even near big cities. They are in forests just outside Warsaw, my friend is now hearing wolf pack 30km outside from Gdansk in northern Poland. Of course that farmers reports loses and this is some cost for the state, that is paying out for those.

But this is our european heritage and we need to make everything to preserve it. Nothing to be afraid of.

Belarus, which shares the bison population with Poland, is not mentioned even once in the article. Fascinating.

The label on one of the images in the article says "The elk is one of the largest herbivores in Europe, besides the bison..."

The image is definitely a moose, not an elk. Is this just a mistake in the article or is "elk" a more general term in Europe?

in america, moose are elks. in europe, elks are moose.

I'm confused.

In America...

The elk is a really big deer... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elk

Moose is a giant deer (bigger than elk) with a bulbous nose... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moose

If Europe refers to moose as elk, what do they call elk?

Most people in Europe do not use English as their everyday language, and those who do have neither Alces alces nor Cervus canandensis at hand to look at. Which is probably why they got it wrong and applied the word "elk" to the wrong animal once they got across the pond. They should have asked some Scandinavians. :-)

Based on the comments and the Naming and Etymology section in the Elk wikipedia. I think in Europe the term "elk" refers to both elk and moose.

"European explorers in North America...thought that the larger North American animal resembled a moose, and consequently gave it the name elk, which is the common European name for moose"

Elk in the UK are referred to as red deer, though recent taxonomy has decided they are a different, albeit closely related, species. I don't know what they're called in other languages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_deer

We call American elk wapiti in NZ, which I guess is a Native American name for them, and we consider them to be distinct from red deer - there's active management of the wapiti population (which is limited to Fiordland) to try to minimise hybridisation with red deer.

We call them wapiti as well, sometimes. It's more common in Canada.

The line between a species and subspecies is blurry. I know for a fact that when I was a child, red deer and elk/wapiti were considered the same species, just like the Neanderthal were considered a subspecies of homo sapiens. I guess the splitters are ascendant in recent times.

The Norwegian Wikipedia article calls our "elg" for Alces alces, while saying the larger American moose is considered a sub-species Alces americanus.

[1]: https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elg

> If Europe refers to moose as elk, what do they call elk?

I believe the answer is they don't have an American Elk equivalent.

It refers to the same animal.

So when will the aurochs come back?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurochs

"The emissions from travel it took to report this story were 18kg CO2, travelling by train and car. The digital emissions from this story are an estimated 1.2g to 3.6g CO2 per page view."

Kinda nice they include that, makes you think.

>The digital emissions from this story are an estimated 1.2g to 3.6g CO2 per page view.

I want to know how many of those emissions are from superfluous javascript, ads, and tracking.

Some time back there was an article posted here about those calculations, and the majority of those emissions accounted not for the serving part but for running the reader's device while they read it.

I hate the javascript deluge as much as the next guy but probably the most energy is spent in keeping the screen on.

That article is one click away from reading that text: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200131-why-and-how-does....

should be easy to calculate if you measure the full site size vs plaintext content.

Size isn't everything. How should 100kb of PNG compare with 100kb of JS? How about 100 bytes of JS that loop endlessly? What about 10kb of text that ultimately convince you to buy solar panels, or a boat, or anything else?

> What about 10kb of text that ultimately convince you to buy solar panels, or a boat, or anything else?

Gobbled up by the Pihole, generating more CO2.

That's one weird / funny thing I like about https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/power.html

The website runs on a ~1W board powered by solar panels (and a battery), the fiber router actually serving it consumes 10x the energy of the server itself.

I misread the title and you probably did too.

Yeah I was like "Lolo Ferrari? I thought she was dead."

I had to reopen my closed tab to make sure I read correctly.

Twice already.

nojs here... what is this about?

https://archive.today/0AYs3

thank you

These environmentalists come off as quite selfish if I might say so. They take public land who belongs to all and redevelop it into their "dream" whatever it may be, and they do not care at all how it impact other people who previously used that public land or people who live nearby. I am not a big fan of these rewilding policies. There are only a few open spaces left where one could previously take a relaxing hike (in Germany). I do not want to have to worry about wolves and bears and bison when I go for a hike in these places. I really don't see how the benefits outweigh the costs.

You don't have to worry about them. We have bears over much of the US (brown bears/grizzlies in the West, black bears in the East). It's not a big deal. Keep the dog on leash in areas with bear activity. Put food in a canister overnight. That's pretty much it.

Because humans have taken so little land for our needs? I can’t think of anything more boring and depressing than hiking in an area ‘sanitised’ of wildlife. Ironically this comment and attitude is what’s really selfish, these animals pose little threat to you. What does pose a threat to you is widespread biodiversity loss.

We're not talking grizzlies or polar bears right?

I've had many relaxing hikes, and even camped overnight, in forests with bears and elk. It's not particularly dangerous if you take proper precautions.

Sorry, but if you are worried about wolves, bears and bison while hiking in Germany that's your fault for worrying about something that basically poses no risk to you.

If you want 'safe', stay in a park.

These might give you some perspective about how drastic (and devastating) the decline has been - all due to humans:

https://xkcd.com/1338/

https://imgur.com/gallery/9v4HV2p

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