In Norway we pay ranchers for sheep which are taken by wolves. They still really hate wolves.
More sheep are taken by wolverines, lynx and bears yet the ranches are still keen on full extermination of the wolf population.
More sheep are taken by wolverines, lynx and bears yet the ranches are still keen on full extermination of the wolf population.
That the wolves, themselves, now have a deep-set fear of humanity and would only dare to do so if they're desperate and starving... is a distant second to that same deep-set cultural fear of wolves.
Unpopular Opinion Time: The ecosystem damage from not having apex predators is large enough that it might be worth a few human lives to avoid.
Unpopular Opinion Time the Second: But there are other apex predators, such as the lynx, which can take much the same role without being nearly as dangerous to megafauna like humans.
Though that's only a decent solution if you don't have problems with megafauna like elk.
Well...I live in a place where we have (in my back yard, except for Bison) all the megafauna present since the ice age. In order of practical danger (most to least), they rank like this: Moose, Bear, Cougar, Snakes, ... Wolves. People are regularly attacked by Moose and fatalities have occurred in the past few decades. People are eaten by bears every few years and injured by bears annually. Cougars present a real danger but they're pretty wary of humans so attacks are more a theoretical risk we hear about from reports concerning mountain bikers in Los Angeles. I never heard of anyone being attacked by a wolf nor anyone being concerned about being attacked by a wolf. Same for Coyotes and Foxes.
I don't hear people suggesting that Moose be killed on sight.
Virtually every adult killed by snakes in America was asking for it. Rattlesnakes sure as shit know they can't eat humans and would never attempt it. They are named for the mechanism they use to scare us away and bite when that fails. A huge number of rattlesnake bites are to the face or hands because it happens when some moron ignores the rattle and picks up the snake.
Wolves, unlike rattlesnakes do sometimes deliberately attack humans with 'malicious' intent. Rattlesnakes never do.
They will often strike without warning. It’s important to pay attention where you put your hands and feet when you’re in rattlesnake country.
In the past 20 years in America, 30 men have been killed by snakes, vs 6 women. Dudes trying to be macho by fucking with snakes explains most of this gap; many of them were bitten on the hands and the circumstances of many of the cases make it pretty clear the snake was being fucked with. Only a handful of incidents were likely genuine accidents.
I was bitten on the ankle as a teenager (luckily as you said, it didn't use venom), at the time I was pretty surprised it was silent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_North_American_animals...
(The Holocene is the period after the glaciers last receded)
They're usually more specialized than wolves, especially in terms of prey, and so the populations of species they don't prey upon are left unchecked.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wolf_attacks_in_Nort...
We might be afraid of them but that fear isn’t grounded in reality.
Yellowstone: How Not To Manage A National Park https://kottke.org/15/01/yellowstone-how-not-to-manage-a-nat...
"By 1934, the Park Service acknowledged that whitetail deer, cougar, lynx, wolf, and possibly wolverine and fisher are gone from the Yellowstone.
What they didn’t say was that the Park Service was solely responsible for the disappearances."
The wolves didn't make any difference to the deer population.
https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/scientists-debun...
It still amazes me how often people think that biologists are stupid
Wolves return to Yellowstone has being ruminated, and I say ruminated, by scientists for 70 long years
All the possible results were examinated, there were lots of reports evaluating the project and all the benefits and cons were studied for decades, by lots and lots of well trained people. The effect of wolf in environment and its role as key species is described in conferences monographs and books.
Teams of scientists studied the populations of each single big mammal and bird in Yellowstone, before and after wolves. You can find their conclusions in the libraries of all universities specialized in ecology and animal management.
The results were even better than expected, but this was a big success because it was based in a entire life of previous hard work.
We talk about reviewed, easily verifiable and painfully verified facts, not about a pulp novel written on a weekend or somebody tossing a coin. Do you really think that somebody could just upload a fakebook video linking to a fake scientific article in this field without being detected and disclosed immediately?
I had some critics or a different opinion != widely disputed;
holy moly fakebook video != science;
You have found an internet link != I must read it ASAP;
It's very rare but it happens.
One guy was dragged out of his tent by a wolf while camping with his two kids and wife. That's extremely rare.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/wolf-attack-rampart-c...
There are also hunters that go missing in areas where there aren't known to be other predators. Some of those cases might be wolves.
There are also cases where we find the remains of a hunter surrounded by dead wolves that he'd shot in a savage fight to the death that he lost.
Again, it's rare. The most dangerous large mammal apart from us in North America is deer, because of people killed hitting them in cars or swerving to avoid them. More wolves might improve that.
"The first fatal attack in the 21st century occurred on November 8, 2005, when a young man was killed by wolves that had been habituated to people in Points North Landing, Saskatchewan, Canada[46] while on March 8, 2010, a young woman was killed while jogging near Chignik, Alaska."
I don't know how that would work with the existence of dogs though, so maybe not.
Spain has 2000.