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Comment by fleddr | Hacker News Reader

That's not really the problem, the problem is that they kill people's cattle and pets.

Why the downvotes here? This is true. They are devastating. Obviously that doesn't matter to the urbanites whose livelihoods aren't put in danger.

Sensible rewilding schemes include compensation. I am not trying to minimise how hard this is, but there's an economic solution. Also, wild dogs probably cause as much damage as wolves do.

Urbanites was a bit un-called for.

Urbanite is a descriptive word, not a epithet. It's called for whenever city-dwellers are being described.

Is always used as a deprecating term in this case. And insulting the same people that are taxed so the farmers can be heavily subsidized, is very unfair.

My brother got compensated, tractor sank into a beavers lodge, broke the axle, got 50 €. Was in the newspaper the day after that.

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.

It’s not about being cute. It’s about the biodiversity that reintroducing a lot of these predators creates. This is well-documented by the reintroduction of wolves in Yellowstone National Park in the USA which occurred in the 1990s.

Rewilded European beavers are responsible for significant improvement in water retention in upland areas reducing flooding, soil loss, and damage to crops. It's not about "cute" its about the long term qui bono.

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.

In Spain there is like a 3% of cattle affected by canine (wolf+dog) attacks, and those loses are covered by the government. We talk about animals that are basically left alone in the nature without protection for weeks and months. In many cases we talk about foals or old and sick cattle and often in a reduced group of farmers that claim to lose 600 animals year after year, but don't even buy a dog, that is a little suspicious if we think about it.

So, maybe is not the bloodbath that many people assume

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