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Comment by Filligree | Hacker News Reader

It's not unreasonable. Wolves are among the few predators that can and will attack humans.

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.

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> Wolves are among the few predators that can and will attack humans

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.

> Snakes

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.

Rattlesnakes actually don’t rattle that much, they rely a lot on camouflage. Also young ones won’t have fully developed rattles and older ones can lose them.

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.

They hide first, but will rattle when they think that has failed. Sometimes they bite first without rattling, particularly when startled, but they are less likely to use venom in those circumstances and those bites will generally be to the ankles or legs. Snakes only have self-preservation in mind when it comes to humans, never predation. They hid because they're scared, and they bite because they're scared. Their venom is meant primarily for catching meals but they'll use it in self defence when pressed.

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.

Yeah, totally agree, no doubt macho men will try to play stupid games. That's not a snake problem.

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.

I'm not sure what constitues megafauna but I believe the two most deadly animals in North America are honey bees and deer. Bees beacuse of alergic reaction/anaphylactic shock after a sting and deer because they tend to dart in front of cars and motorcycles.

~100 lbs body weight is one rule of thumb.

One theory is that humans ate a bunch of these animals to extinction:

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

(The Holocene is the period after the glaciers last receded)

> 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.

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.

Wolves by and large do not attack humans:

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.

"Solutions" like this are how we destroyed Yellowstone the first time, and why deer now run rampant all over the US, literally eroding forests from excessive grazing. A naive assumption about a complex system has knock-on effects that destroy the entire ecosystem.

You're making a naive assumption based on one popular Facebook video.

The wolves didn't make any difference to the deer population.

do you have information to back that claim up?

"It's a really romantic story," Utah State University ecologist Dan McNulty said. "It's a story about a world that doesn't really exist."

https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/scientists-debun...

> "Is a really romantic history"

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?

Yes, I do. That video is widely disputed by ecologists and you haven’t read my link.

one ecologist != ecologists;

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;

Taking wolves off the endangered list does not mean open season on hunting any and all wolves with abandon. The wolves of Yellowstone will still be mostly protected.

Deer herds are managed large for hunting also. We could issue lots more doe permits and make herds smaller right quick.

Also, since some people missed it: I wasn't talking about the effect of reintroducing wolves of Yellowstone (although they were mismanaged too). I was talking about the effect of messing with the ecosystem the first time.

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."

Is there a citation for a single attack on a human? I'd looked before, some years back, and was unable to find any.

There were a couple attacks here in Canada just this year.

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.

It happens. They are predators and we are relatively defenseless. Given enough motivation and circumstances, it will happen. Not an argument to destroy them, but we should base discussions on reality.

"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."

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

The wolf is the species of animal that has saved more human lifes also (excepting humans of course). Is also in a really select club of animals deliberately adopting and taking care of lost children. They had a strong desire to protect cubs.

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