Reminds me of the conflict between German farmers and the Goverment over whether or not wolves should be a protected species. Plenty of city-dwellers support all forms of biodiversity, as long as somebody else has to deal with the mess.
Urbanites was a bit un-called for.
Now that the beaver has destroyed the road foundation several times and the public had to pay for it, over and over, the mood of the sub-urban dwellers is slowly shifting. Turns out wildlife is not so cute, if you have to pay out of pocket for it.
Maybe the road has to move. It's going to cost money to repair come what may, so maybe shifting it is the answer. I don't know, I just want to point out you're making huge assumptions about what the right answer IS, and also using "my specific therefore defines the general as wrong" arguments. Sure. Your brother had a bad beaver experience. European farmers who lost land to water runoff from bare hills are taking a different view.
So, maybe is not the bloodbath that many people assume
Now the hippopotamus... that is an animal widely feared in Africa. They may look fat and silly and eat plants, but they give no fucks, and will charge and trample you without a second thought.
https://scoutlife.org/features/161345/7-animal-myths-that-ev...
But definitely keep your distance from hippos, the most dangerous animal in Africa. They kill hundreds to thousands of people per year.
> When I turned on the news and discovered that the messages were about a lion killed by an American dentist, the village boy inside me instinctively cheered: One lion fewer to menace families like mine.
> My excitement was doused when I realized that the lion killer was being painted as the villain.
> In my village in Zimbabwe, surrounded by wildlife conservation areas, no lion has ever been beloved, or granted an affectionate nickname. They are objects of terror.
> When I was 9 years old, a solitary lion prowled villages near my home. After it killed a few chickens, some goats and finally a cow, we were warned to walk to school in groups and stop playing outside. My sisters no longer went alone to the river to collect water or wash dishes; my mother waited for my father and older brothers, armed with machetes, axes and spears, to escort her into the bush to collect firewood.
> The lion sucked the life out of the village: No one socialized by fires at night; no one dared stroll over to a neighbor’s homestead.
> When the lion was finally killed, no one cared whether its murderer was a local person or a white trophy hunter, whether it was poached or killed legally. We danced and sang about the vanquishing of the fearsome beast and our escape from serious harm.
> And please, don’t offer me condolences about Cecil unless you’re also willing to offer me condolences for villagers killed or left hungry by his brethren
The reason that most harm inflicted by lions is economic or secondary is that people go well out of their way to avoid meeting lions. That doesn't represent a small problem; it represents a gigantic problem.
I live in Sweden. The topic of a wolf crossing borders with Norway where the conservation laws are different comes up every few years. The attitude of people in different countries to wolves (or any topic of the day really) gets discussed.
Wolf attacks are a nearly irrelevant problem. Older generations are irrationally/disproportionately afraid of wolf attacks.
People saved by wolves aka dogs: countless.
Story changes, when all the easily hunted deer is gone and a harsh winter comes. Once the hunt success without retaliation is there - it all goes south fast.
There are indeed many known cases when rabid wolves have attacked humans, but obviously there are far less such cases than the attacks due to rabid dogs or even rabid foxes, because there are much more dogs than wolves.
In the past, there have also been many cases when humans have died due to other causes, mainly due to cold, then wolves have eaten the dead bodies and when they were found the death has been wrongly attributed to wolves.
I have grown in an Eastern European country, with much more wolves than in any Western European country.
Nevertheless, at least during the last century, there has been known absolutely no case of a human attacked by wolves, with the exception of attacks due to solitary rabid wolves, which could be fatal when not treated immediately.
Of course there were a very large number of cases of sheep or other domestic animals which were eaten by wolves.
On the other hand, bears or wild boars will not hesitate to attack humans in certain circumstances, so they belong to a completely different group of animals from this point of view.
Want to bring it back and keep it in an animal sanctuary? Sure.
Free roaming herds in Europe? No thanks.