Wild mammals are making a comeback in Europe | Hacker News Reader

Wild mammals are making a comeback in Europe

ourworldindata.org

301 pointsgmays160 comments

Where I live in Portugal, close to the Aveiro lagoon, there are now lots of storks, flamingoes, wild ducks and other marine birds. I don't remember all this variety and quantity when I was a kid.

Every time I marvel at a flock of these birds I keep thinking that perhaps the conservation efforts paid off.

That lagoon seems so custom-made for birds! Especially with the tide coming in and out.

I've often driven up from the south, and am amazed that sometimes there's hardly any water at all, and then sometimes it's a deep lake.

is this because more tropical birds are moving north? in pennsylvania we're getting a ton of birds in the spring/summer that never make it this far north. it's because their native habitats in the carolinas and georgia are too hot.

sorry to be a downer.

> I don't remember all this variety and quantity when I was a kid.

We have the same thing happening in the United States. A few months ago I was walking with my kids, and some woman passing us was incredulous that they weren't phased by seeing a rabbit, and said that when she was a kid it would have been one of the highlights of her year. And I was like yeah, same with me as a kid, but now we see them 20x a day.

Where in the US have rabbits been a rarity for the last few decades?

This is purely anecdotal, but I’m amazed at the number of rabbits in / around Boston compared to Houston and Austin, Texas. I’ve seen no more than a few each year in Texas vs several per week around Cambridge, Medford, and Somerville, Massachusetts.

That’s very interesting. I see several per week in my neighborhood in DFW. Same in my past DFW neighborhood. I’m guessing it’s much more localized than just metro/city. Certain suburbs might be much more suitable.

When I lived in Austin it seems like rabbits swarmed the neighborhood every third year or so, it was quite an irregular pattern.

Living in Stockholm now, I'm surprised by the number of European Hares I see when out for a night run or dog walk.

My dog lived in harmony with Texan rabbits, but there's something about the hare that makes him... curious. Maybe it's the big ears?

Different climates. Desert animals became much more nocturnal to avoid the heat. Primary production in Boston is also higher probably. More plants will sustain more rabbits.

Many cities sport large enough feral cat populations that rabbits are rare.

Seeing storks with their giant nests atop utility poles on the drive from Lisbon to Lagos was one of the most unique and memorable aspects of my recent trip to Portugal.

I was about to ask about what prompted you to drive across the Sahara, but after checking the map for possible routes, understood that you meant Lagos, Portugal and not Lagos, Nigeria.

Haha, indeed. The "other" Lagos in Portugal.

When a North American sees storks on their nests atop trees in Portugal he feels the same awe and excitement an European would feel seeing a moose crossing the highway in Canada.

Although storks are far more common in Alentejo than moose in Western Canada.

There are moose in Europe, I have seen several.

A Møøse once bit my sister.

Fireflies. There are moose in Europe, but no fireflies.

Of course there are fireflies in Europe.

TIL, and obviously there's a specialist site tracking observations [1]. Thanks, I guess bioluminescent animals are not just a Disney invention! :)

[1]: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/fireflies-of-europe

Yes, but during my trips to the United States I was surprised by the abundance of fireflies. I think it was the first time I have seen them in my life.

Not like in the US. Compared to the symphony of light of peak firefly season in the US, there are indeed no fireflies anywhere in Europe. That is a hill I will die on.

I read somewhere recently that Sweden or Norway or both has/have moose.

I have seen fireflies outside of Norrköping when I was a kid.

Finally some good news.

The world needs to draw up lines for wild life reserves in the vicinity of domestic areas.

We must as humans become closer to nature accepting that its biodiversity and life is a major part of out own well being.

It should be mandatory that each country puts up at least X% of land dedicated solely to being nature without any human interference.

Amen

Controversial take but I absolutely don’t see the point of reintroductions. Ecosystems are dynamic equilibrium. Reintroductions are just a different kind of man-made arbitrary modification.

Loss of biodiversity is a good indicator that something wrong is happening but biodiversity in and of itself is not a particularly interesting aim. The mechanism at play in nature will ensure a return to diversity if things are left to themselves.

In some cases reintroduction can be positive because certain species were selectively hunted, the factors involved in habitat loss have been reversed, or the species might play an important role in habitat restoration.

It may take thousands of years for the ecosystem to recover by itself. Human destruction of habitats is a faster mechanism, and will always win if we do nothing to revert it. Also, biodiversity is a good thing in itself.

There's nothing wrong with recovering ecosystem. The Amazon forest was man-made, for example. It doesn't make it any less important.

> The Amazon forest was man-made

Was it?

I raised my eyebrow at that comment and found [1] and [2] which mentions evidence of human influence in the region, though I can't watch that BBC doc in my region, the paper is pretty interesting in there appears to be some lost civilization buried under the trees. That paper is from 2003 so I'd imagine there's more up to date research somewhere out there. I'd consider the statement "man-made" to be massively exaggerated unless proven otherwise.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0122njp [2] https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Amazonia-1492%3A-Prist...

> The mechanism at play in nature will ensure a return to diversity if things are left to themselves

Yes, but that takes hundreds of thousands of years, for mistakes we made on the order of a hundred years ago up to now.

And we need working ecosystems now or too many species will go extinct, then we are in danger too and it will become many millions of years before something similar is back.

Left to their own devices, wild mammals have to cross significant human barriers (roads, neighborhoods, fencing, etc.) to repopulate certain natural areas which they have been exterminated from.

Where I live in Southern Arizona, re-population efforts for bighorn sheep have been successful in the mountain ranges near cities (Tucson). Access to these ranges from nearby "naturally" populated areas (50+ mile distances) requires crossing the interstate, fenced in train tracks, ranches, and extensive urban development. Since their extermination from certain areas, this has not happened naturally (and is arguably not possible). I think similar arguments could be made for the Mexican Wolf population in the southwest.

I agree in principle that ecosystems will re-equilibrate on their own, but given the current state of human development certain areas would remain off-limits for various animals without human intervention, maybe leading to certain species or subspecies becoming extinct. I'm no wildlife biologist but would defer to one on this topic.

Same with reintroduction of beavers to the UK, it is an island they won’t get here (unlike some birds). We also need some predators for deer other than humans here.

European motorways (at least new ones) are built with bridges for animals. Like this:

https://www.crazynauka.pl/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/microso...

And that's in a country with 120 people per square kilometer compared to 36 people per square kilometer in US.

Matter of regulation.

America has those too, but they’re enormous and expensive because we’re dumb. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/animals-are-using-...

I don't see how that is much more enormous or expensive than the European example above; care to explain?

> The mechanism at play in nature will ensure a return to diversity if things are left to themselves.

In the long run. But in the long run, we are all dead. And considering the amount of time it takes for a new species to evolve, not only are we all dead, but so are the next hundred thousand generations of our offspring. This is a personal view, but to me the return to diversity in a few million years is pretty meaningless.

Biodiversity is a goal in itself, for several reasons.

Most selfishly, the greater variety of life, the more raw genetic material there is for humanity to put to use, and the more survival strategies there are for us to learn about. Things like enhancing crop yields, nutrition, and disease resistance. Food, medicines and medical research are just the most obvious practical benefits.

Again, a personal view, but to me diversity is also aesthetically pleasing. Diversity provides interest and a richness to life that combats monotony and boredom. I also find it pleasing to think I might leave a place more varied and interesting than I found it.

Increasing the range of a species, increases its resilience to extinction. That has to be balanced against any negative effects on other parts of the ecosystem (everthing has gotta eat...). Introducing a species to somewhere new has a chance of being quite harmful, but reintroducing a species to somewhere it recently became extinct much less so. It may perturb the new equilibrium (if a few decades is enough time for an equilibrium to establish), but is pretty unlikely to be harmful to biodiversity. It is more likely to be helpful. The recovery of pine martens in Ireland has helped the recovery of red squirrels, for example (admittedly at the bloody expense of the invasive grey).

Wolf reintroductions to Yellowstone, for instance, totally changed the ecosystem for the better.

Animals evolved to keep each other in check. If you remove one animal, but not its prey, then the prey can cause an even greater loss of biodiversity by excessive proliferation. In the case of Yellowstone’s wolves, their absence allowed elk to proliferate. Elk then ate too much vegetarian, which prevented forests from developing. The lack of forest lead to a decline in song bird and beaver populations. The decline in beavers lead to a decline in dams, which removed key habitats for other animals.

To flip your question on its head: the reintroduction of wolves was clearly beneficial for Yellowstone. What is the argument against reintroducing the wolf, or reintroductions in general?

Having been very, very close to this issue when wolves were re-introduced to Yellowstone, the vocal opposition to this was that a handful of ranchers near Yellowstone who are very much Welfare Queens didn't want to loose cows to wolves that were on the other side of the fence.

Not sure its fair to call them "welfare queens" but no one likes to see their livelihood threatened.

If I remember correctly wolves returning to Yellowstone generated 5 million dollars each year to the area only by the increase in tourists. Plus environmental benefits

This has nothing to do with the livelihood of the farmers

Imagine that you are that farmer. To start, you can buy a lot of cows with five millions of dollars

Or your city could provide you with better services now that they have five extra millions each year. Better roads would allow you to move your cattle faster or to export your products better. So you lose some, but win some also.

Or maybe you will not need it, now that the new local restaurants opened want to buy your meat to feed the tourists. More competence and lower expenses to put your product in the market will allow you to sell your meat at a better price.

Tourists will want to buy souvenirs also. Maybe in stores owned by members of your family.

Your city will attract researchers. Science has a curious proven effect; each single researcher position creates tens of auxiliary jobs around to sustain their research.

In resume, the young adults in your city will have a range of new opportunities to settle, work and start a live project in their own city if they would desire so.

Or you can forget all of this and keep your cow

Be honest, do you really liked so much that stupid cow?

Yes. The farmer chose to live way out there far from people, and would appreciate the dang tourists going away.

In a society everybody must sacrifice something if is for mutual benefit.

Wolves had proven again and again that produce more money that they remove. Had proven also that can save human lives reducing car collisions and that they positively protect agriculture and fixate water sources in the area.

Why should a few farmers (I agree that I should be more precise and use ranchers instead) force their will over the whole population and block the development of a local area?. Isn't this a democracy?. Who are this people to decide that their village can't receive tourism and that everybody in the area must be a rancher or migrate?

Environmental services aren't free. Some resources will need to be sacrificed to keep the machine working, and in any case cattle owners can reduce their losses to an acceptable level by several traditional and well tested ways.

And about the "dang" tourists, we need to remember that US citizens have full rights to visit and enjoy public spaces and protected areas open to public in the whole country. Granted by constitution.

Why? Because is their country also. Is --their-- land also.

They have exactly the same right to enjoy a well adjusted National park as any local

Your initial argument was that farmers should want the development, "do you really like that stupid cow?" -- and my attempted point was that yes, the farmers do in fact like that stupid cow. All the benefits you propose of the increased tourism and 5 million dollars pale in many farmers' minds to the downside of having more tourists, who clog up the roads, complain about their farming practices, drive up land prices, and want to build developments. Farming is a lifestyle well suited to loners and cow farming in particular is well suited to very remote areas; thus added tourism, making it a less remote area, decreases the local farmer's reason for existing there.

To reply to your new point, an important part of democracy is the right of self-determination, and people get very upset when faraway majorities impose their wills despite the local majority disagreeing. Consider Catalonia, or other independence movements throughout history, or any number of instances of imperialism throughout history: should a national majority be able to force a local majority to give up their way of life / national independence / raison d'etre? That's how local residents who've been there for 20, 30, 60 years feel about outsiders coming in to diversify the economy or introduce wolves to eat their lambs -- why are the outsiders coming in and imposing their negatives on their apparently perfectly good way of life?

> an important part of democracy is the right of self-determination

You need to check again the definition of democracy. This self-determination fairy tale has been repeated a thousand times but is still false.

> should a national majority be able to force a local majority to give up their way of life / national independence / raison d'etre?

Hum, yeeees? This is exactly the point of having a central government making the laws for the entire nation

No one is talking about farmers at all. Farmers grow crops intensively on their own land.

Ranching is a very different activity which in the west usually involves a cheap grazing lease on thousands of acres of public land... it is the governments land and they balance the concerns of all stakeholders.

Welfare ranchers are ranchers who rely on cheap/subsidized grazing leases on federal land. It includes a shocking number of billionaires making big money off public land.

Yes and it happened when a guy simply decided to stop waiting for people to fight and simply gathered the money and bought the rights to the ranchers land.

This is a good example in particular because state and federal agencies have been extremely judicious when it comes to doing reintroductions since then.

In the rest of the West (CA, OR, WA, ID, MT) there have been basically zero wolf reintroductions recently. Wolf packs are spreading naturally back to their historical range, and agencies are instead focused on tracking populations and working with local communities to regulate hunting, protect the livelihoods of ranchers, etc.

It's much more than that even. Without the wolves the elk and deer graze along creeks destroying willows that shade the water leading to warmer water temps and fewer fish, more erosion and less water retention / flood control. This even impacts downstream farmers who take water out for irrigation.

Also the wolves keep mountain lions, coyotes and other predators in check (through competition and even predation) and wary. I suspect mountain lion encounters in California will go way down if the wolves ever come back.

This is mentioned in other responses, but keep in mind that frequently, it's urban sprawl which endangered these animals in the first place.

We're not going to start closing up our cities to let animals come back. But we can take steps to make the environments around them more hospitable: bridges under highways, reserved areas for wildlife. Once these are in place, some reintroductions to kick-start the process makes more sense.

A lot of the animals being reintroduced were key parts of the ecosystem before they were eliminated in areas, and their absence can lead to unexpected imbalances. Reintroductions makes sense in this context. Or at least, introducing another animal which fills a similar niche.

Maybe the most famous example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_campaign

That is an extreme case, but sometimes the best way to correct a human-caused error is a human-caused solution. Nature will always find an equilibrium, but probably not an equilibrium that works well for us unless we nudge it. Reintroducing sparrows is clearly better than accepting the natural equilibrium of "locusts are everywhere and we can't grow food anymore".

Yes but that’s just another manipulation of an ecosystem to suit human activity. Fundamentally I remain unconvinced by most of the answers which boil down we want to reintroduce these species because it suits us from an aesthetic point of view or it fosters our own desire for a return to a state we judge more pristine or authentic. It’s basically the 19th century craze for zoo but adapted to modern taste.

It's not really clear what your position is. Are you against any sort of human intervention? Or are you in favour of conservation but not restoration? (Try not to break stuff, but don't fix things we've broken). Or do you think it's justifiable to perturb ecosystems for economic reasons, but not to attempt to restore them for aesthetic reasons (car parks are Ok, but safari parks are not)?

I'm fine with conservation which is after all mostly stopping or limiting our harmful activities so they are sustainable. In a lot of way, it's the reverse of an intervention.

Meddling is not fixing things we have broken. It's just altering things again but in a way we find intellectually pleasing. I don't think trying to bring back ecosystems to their previous state as inherent value. I don't value nature for nature sake generally speaking. That's a rich urban dweller idea of morality. My issue with the human impact on Earth - climate change and what it does to the biosphere - is that it's unsustainable and will have a massive impact on our way of life if nothing is done.

I don't really care about wild mammals in Europe outside of their rise being a signal that other things are doing better.

> I don't really care about wild mammals in Europe outside of their rise being a signal that other things are doing better.

OK, I am sympathetic to the suspicion that reintroductions of European mammals might just be a highly-visible gesture aimed at our own enjoyment of "nature", rather than fixing of conserving the fundamentals. But plenty of people do value nature for the sake of nature - so there's just a values difference there.

But attention-grabbing species do make progress visible, and visible indicators of system health are very useful. Larger animals and apex predators can also have larger impacts on an ecosystem, both positive and negative. For example, it is often argued that the reintroduction of wolves to Scotland would reduce the artificially high population of red deer, which in turn would help the recovery of forests and the rich ecosystem they support.

Bad equilibria exist. If a better equilibrium that involved some currently gone animal us known to have existed and have been better, a reintroduction is an obvious step back to it.

That takes a long time though... Not sure why we should wait for entirely new ecosystem pathways to develop over millions of years when we can just reintroduce key species extinct from the area.

They agreed that 30% should be set aside at COP15 yesterday. They probably won't, but we are one step closer to having your wish.

> X% of land dedicated solely to being nature

that happens on small scales in places: our neighborhood in Arizona reserves 33% of land in its natural Sonoran desert state, so houses are interspersed within that...this means bobcats (north american slang for the local lynx), puma, javelina, coyote, etc. are resident among us, and regularly seen (the pumas less regularly, but on trail cams regularly).

I want to see herds of bison in north America that make the Serengeti seem quaint

Would be nice. Need wildlife bridges and culverts over the highways. Just, a general commitment to modern, nature friendly infrastructure in the US.

people are making it happen:

https://www.americanprairie.org/

Podcast:

https://www.econtalk.org/pete-geddes-on-the-american-prairie...

The US seems to be about 2% national parks:

"The total area protected by national parks is approximately 52.2 million acres (211,000 km2)" -- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_parks_of_th...

"Total area 3,796,742 sq mi (9,833,520 km2)" -- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States

(Just data; I'm not trying to make any particular point.)

National Parks are just one type of designation. There's 20-plus different designations, and that's just at the federal level. Wikipedia says 13% of the land in the US is protected (which is about 10% of all protected land in the world), but I believe certain designations allow for some level of exploitation (hunting, mining etc).

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

Yeah, just looking at National Parks grossly undercounts and, if anything, National Parks are generally more developed (though have more protections) than a lot of other federal properties. Of course, it's somewhat uneven in terms of location. Federal land is disproportionately out west and in Alaska in terms of acreage.

Also logging and ranching, combined with the lack of large predators like wolves, bears and wild cats has had a pretty large impact

We also have some national security zones that are off limits to development.

Nevada National Security Site, for example.

National parks with roads running through them.

This is indeed great progress!

Along with reserved zones, we must also provide protection along migration routes. Everything from insects to bison and whales can migrate considerable distances, and the routes that they need do not coincide with human development. If they cannot successfully travel between their seasonal areas, they will still be lost.

We're not there yet, but need to keep making good things happen.

We need to ban cars, the major killer of all wildlife and people.

Let's just ban cars for private use by regular people. It's the one that's both net negative and by far the biggest use case. Trucks and emergency servers and various commercial utility vehicles are the major savior of wildlife, human life, and enabler of many nice things.

That's IMO the rational, "don't throw out the baby with the bathwater" approach. It's also the one that has zero chance of uptake, as individuals don't like ideas that constrain them instead of the "evil" industry, government or billionaires.

This is certainly good news, but have a hard time reconciling it with the frequent posters here on HN that propose that vacant land be taxed so high it in effect forces it be developed (i.e. the taxes are so high, nobody can afford to keep land in its undeveloped state). Without large tracts of undeveloped land, animals will disappear - and then so will we as a species.

Cannot for the life of me understand what the 'we need to punitively tax all undeveloped land' people are smoking.

And on today’s episode of connecting two different things which have no connection…

No one wants to tax wildlife reserves.

>>No one wants to tax wildlife reserves.

So we should ensure that animals are only allowed to live on government approved 'wildlife reserves'? Where do said animals get their permits, and the directions to where they are allowed to live?

You’re being absurd.

You can do both according to what makes the most sense.

You can always get the federal state as a last term buyer if nobody wants the land.

Vacant and underused land taxes in incorporated cities save wild and farm land.

The point is to tax land according to its value, i.e. heavily where it's in demand (such as in the center of cities) and lightly where it's not. If anything, this would likely increase the space left open for animals, as it would increase urban density and reduce sprawl.

"Undeveloped" farmland should have low taxation, and "wilderness" even less or none at all.

It's vacant buildings that should be taxed brutally, incentivizing lower rents, or their replacement with space-efficient ones, or their demolition.

In Massachusetts (US), the wild Turkey is making a comeback.

They shit all over the place.

But it's so cool seeing them prance all over the place that I'll put up with a little poo on the ground. When they do their mating dance, they look like peacocks.

In upstate NY, we seen them in our backyard. I'm planning to plant American hazel (Corylus americana), a native species, to try to attract/feed more of them (and other wildlife). They eat this plant's mast (fallen nuts).

So are coyotes, beavers, hawks, and even bears.

This is probably a function of human development, but I am only saying this out of instinct. These mammals have probably adapted to us and are following where we go.

If we're talking about coyotes in the NE they were never native, they're new. Deer are a huge pest now, they're missing the wolves and foxes that kept them under control.

They weren't native to the NE because the native populations of wolves kept them out of the area.

I was so excited to roll up to my grandparents house for Thanksgiving and have to stop for wild turkeys crossing the road.

Why did you capitalize turkey?

A few years ago I was in Cambridge, MA for a few months and was amazed you guys have wild turkeys hanging out in the middle of the city. I would occasionally be walking down a city street and there'd just be a group of large wild turkeys walking down the sidewalk.

This data is interesting, but comparing two data points, 1965 and 2016, is much less helpful than some trend lines would be

WW2 ended in 1945. I'd imagine that was probably an absolute low point for most mammals in Europe

Aren't those mammals making comeback mainly in Carpathian mountains (arc from Slovakia to Romania), leading to bears openly attacking population, but almost nothing is happening in the Alps?

Was passing trough Transfagarian when a downhill bicycle race was happening. Some police officers were revving their motorbikes and throwing rocks at a bear to keep it away from the contestants. Lots of bear cubs along the way too. Everyone just keeps feeding them...

Not sure what to make of the situation. The bears didn't seem hostile and none of the locals were too scared of them.

> The bears didn't seem hostile and none of the locals were too scared of them.

There are no locals on the Transfagarasan, just tourists :)

No local in our mountain area is happy that bears come from the forest to eat from the trash cans, believe me. And I mean even in cities, not remote villages. If you ask me, we have a bear overpopulation problem now.

> There are no locals on the Transfagarasan, just tourists :)

Ah, that makes sense

> No local in our mountain area is happy that bears come

Yeah, I was afraid to exit the car. Just a weird experience seeing others feeding the bears or having a race right next to them.

Interesting. There are some towns in Minnesota where the locals have really good relationships with the local (black) bears. They feed them, play with them, introduce their kids to them, post videos of them putting their hands in their mouths, etc. Basically all the things they tell you not to do. There's probably a big difference between black bears and Eurasian brown bears, but I wonder how much potential their is to achieve cohabitation through cultural change alone

Historically humans have hunted other predators because of simple competition. But nowadays, bears hunting elk is not a threat to our food source

I was born and lived most of my life in Minnesota, and got into outdoor activities pretty heavily in 2020. I’ve never heard of what you describe and it would be a terrible idea. I’ve only come across one bear in the wild and it bolted away upon noticing me. Bears that aren’t afraid of humans are pretty bad news.

Invisibilia did an episode on Eagles Nest Township in Saint Louis County:

https://www.npr.org/programs/invisibilia/531902291/reality

Look at the chart at the bottom of the post before writing such a comment.

Brown bear population has only recovered 44% . Almost lowest out of 10s of mammals

You can always try to just enjoy some good news

The point was that we see a huge increase in Carpathians but almost none in Alps, so on average there is an EU-wide increase, which leads to dangerous (to humans) numbers in one part of EU and near-extinct levels in other parts.

> (arc from Slovakia to Romania)

Technically from Austria, since Hundsheimer Berge are part of Little Carpathians.

> leading to bears openly attacking population

Were they doing it more secretly before?

Bears defend their territories and when there are too many of them, some get pushed out of forests and try to survive in human settlements, typically by picking trash and that sometimes leads to attacking people with grim consequences. The number of bear attacks in Carpathians is rising sharply lately.

Here's a cool service (unfortunately I haven't yet been able to use it) to do a "European safari" and go see some of these wild animals. Good fun, but also important to provide an economic benefit to the local community

https://www.rewildingeuropetravel.com/

My sister in law does the same in the cairngorms in Scotland. If you like slow paced nature exploration with beautiful landscapes, I highly recommend.

I visited Virginia twice this year to be with family for a medical emergency. First visit I was distantly aware the foxes we knew from childhood placenames had become more present. Bringing my pup this fall it was astonishing. The foxes are EVERYWHERE, and they’re appropriately cautious about contact but otherwise happy to be about town if you’re not a hint of a threat.

People say they’re overpopulated, but mostly because they feel inconvenienced by habitat that was there before them and has adapted to them almost invisibly. You MIGHT hear them from a porch if you know what to listen for. You’ll only see them if they don’t feel threatened too. Whenever I asked, people who were concerned about their presence were very surprised to hear I’d seen them pass through. They didn’t mind me and my visiting city pup sliding through along with them though.

A wolf was sadly run over today in Denmark, it has been eradicated since 1813, im not sure there is big enough places for it to stay without human contact tho, but it is exciting.

We got big packs of 11 wolves here in Southern Sweden now and immediately they're talking about hunting them.

I understand, the sheep farmers are getting a lot of sheeps killed.

We've had wolves for a while up in Värmland and those northern parts. So maybe it's not completely necessary for them to spread down here to be preserved.

Once we're gone, they'll come back out and spread south.

Same here in NL. Just a few years ago there were reports of wolfs wandering around and I think last year the first wolves were born here again.

Currently there’s talking about using paintball guns to keep them away from farms.

> 2 fatal wolf attacks in the past century in north america

wolves are only really a threat to farmers. For which there's a million other solutions than driving them to extirpation

Past generations got rid of the wolves for a reason. Although it's nice for wildlife to exist somewhere, it doesn't belong in close contact with humans.

The desire to bring wildlife to where people live reminds me of anti-vax in that it's giving up safety benefits we've gained out of a misguided desire to be more natural.

> Past generations got rid of the wolves for a reason

and the reason was ignorance

The reason was partly a blind desire for "safety" despite wolf attacks being exceedingly rare (2 fatal wolf attacks in the past century in north america). But mostly it was due to commercial interests. It was to prop up an already unsustainable model of agricultural/textile production

Wolves bring us biodiversity, keep diseases down, and even help rivers flow (by keeping graminivore populations down). We have way more to gain from them than to lose

I feel like the anti-wolf side is much more akin to "anti-vax" than the pro-wolf side is. Either way its probably a bad comparison

There are people living just about everywhere. Open up Google Maps, switch to satellite view, zoom out until the scale is 2 km / 1 mi and scroll until you no longer see farmers' fields. I had to go 500 km, and I only actually found the edge of human settlement because I live in Canada and went north until I hit ~55° latitude.

If wildlife is only allowed where there's no people, it's going to be confined to the most inhospitable places on Earth.

Near me, it's about 20 miles from the metro (25th largest in the US) to the nearest wilderness area. I'm sure there's a lot of folks who'd love to be able to buy up and live out there, it is very hospitable. But thankfully it is almost entirely national forest and protected from development.

> it doesn't belong in close contact with humans

You couldn't be more wrong

People forgot this all the time. Wolves and dogs are in --the same-- species. They can interbreed and have fertile pups, so is by definition, the same species.

This means that most extant alive wolves live inside --our-- homes. Think about it.

No other species achieved such closer connection with human societies. Not even apes. If an animal deserves a place close to human societies for mutual benefit is this.

Dogs are not gray wolves, not descended from them either. The fact that they can technically interbreed doesn't change the fact that a modern dog is completely domesticated and nothing like a wolf.

Of course that dogs descend of gray wolves

Past generations used dogs to guard their flocks.

Driving wolves to extinction wasn't a deliberate effort, it's just what happens when humans expand into a predator's territory, displace its normal prey, and then opportunistically kill it, while denying it access (via the aforementioned dogs) to those succulent sheep they replaced the deer with.

> I understand, the sheep farmers are getting a lot of sheep killed.

https://www.newsweek.com/wolf-kills-nine-year-critically-inj...

https://a-z-animals.com/blog/meet-the-worlds-deadliest-wolf-...

https://wolf.org/headlines/the-child-eating-wolves-of-turku-...

There are likely many more wolf attacks than ever known, because the wolves will take away their pray and devour almost all of it rather quickly. What's left will be scavenged within a day or so by vultures / what have you. Further, we used to regularly hunt wolves and keep dogs (Wolfhounds). As they make more human contact, they'll definitely be a lot more deaths.

That said, I think it's good / healthy to keep them around, but it's often not just the sheep that farmers are concerned about.

> but it's often not just the sheep that farmers are concerned about.

Often you say? The sources you pulled up, cite 150 year old horror stories (i.e. the height of wolf panic that led to their extinction in most of Europe) from sparsely populated areas. The event in Russia is tragic, but as one of your sources points out, the vast majority of attacks are from rabid animals. Rabies is largely extinct in Europe, maybe not so much in Dagestan?

The point is that outside of sparsely populated mountain regions, hardly anyone has to be fearful of the big bad wolf. <3000 deadly encounters in the past 300 years, most of them (>80%) due to rabies. Statistically the opposite of often.

Why don't they get dogs to guard the herds then? And seriously, you're claiming that there's going to be wolves attacking people?

...do you know how modern wildlife management works? If wolves are reduced to hunting humans, it's because of a massive imbalance between predator and prey numbers, for whatever reason. Any half-decent forest service / whoever has rangers in your country, will be monitoring that balance, and stepping in to prevent a) animal suffering and b) potential risks to humans

What disappoints me about wolfs in Denmark is the number of people who think they should be shot. We get all upset when people in Africa shoots lions, elefants and whatnot, but they can be just as much an inconveniences as a wolf in Denmark.

You can't insist that other countries protect wild animals, while trying to eradicate them at home, just because it might hurt the economy.

Well the economies of far-away places with far-out people don't matter, obviously. More rhino horn soup please!

We're getting more and more wild animals as well here in the US, some say it's a good thing, but I originally come from a part of the world where I had packs of stray dogs and chimpanzees literally living on the street, they steal things and sometimes become violent towards people — something the Discovery channel doesn't often show.

There's a difference between increasing populations of endangered animals like wolves and doing it for the animals that humanity has increased in number and range, like dogs.

Not sure how chimps fit in though.

Not the best example, dogs can be converted back into wolves, they can even interbreed with them, Plug-and-Play, so to speak. Dogs are basically domesticated wolves... leave them on the street and they start forming packs, breed like crazy, and sooner rather than later you get weird-looking wolves running around eating smaller animals and bullying everyone and everything. Pack animals are bullies. And if you ever meet a pack of wolves face-to-face (or just one hungry one), you'd probably feel like an endangered animal yourself. That's why in Alaska people have guns with them at all times.

Chimpanzees are the worst, there's a huge population over the world, and they're really violent.

I don't think many dogs would revert to wolves. It is too advantageous to live close to humans and enjoy their byproducts.

read an interesting take that North American bison are (were) an invasive species from europe that wound up in NA by crossing some land-bridge at some point in prehistory.

Yes, roughly -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bison#Evolution_and_genetic_hi...

Though "invasive" is usually not used when they showed up ~150,000 years ago, and appear to have evolved through a couple distinct species since then.

To continue this tangent with an assortment of fun facts:

Earthworms were mostly extinct through most of North America. They do a tremendous service to soil health, but in NA most of the vegetation has evolved to work with harder to access nutrients and the introduction and rapid spread of earthworms has mostly helped invasive plants take over as they're better adapted to take advantage of the nutrients earthworms make available

Mustangs (wild horses) are an introduced species, but NA had its own wild horse that went extinct about 10k years ago. Texas may have 2-5k wild tigers today due to lack of pet regulation and people not realizing how difficult it is to take care of a fucking tiger. Part of me wonders if introduced wild cat species can play the same role Smilodon and other native wild cats played before their extinction

Bison population reached over 60 million in pre-colonial turtle island, but this likely only happened due to humans successfully driving out other megafauna that might've hunted them. The famous grasslands of turtle island are only possible because of bison however. Without them, they would be overgrown by woodland ecosystems. Elephants often play a similar role in ecosystems

> Texas may have 2-5k wild tigers today

Texas is estimated to have 2-5K tigers privately owned in zoos and kept as pets. This is a terrible but legal idea, because Texas.

I can't find any estimate for a number of wild/feral tigers in TX, but it's surely not anywhere near that number.

Ah you're right, I misread. It seems that by some estimates there's more tigers in Texas than total tigers in the wild worldwide!

Which is astonishing!

I was struggling to imagine where you'd hide a few thousand tigers in the Texas wilds. My best guess was the eastern TX/LA border area swamps, but that just didn't make sense.

It'd be awesome though. :)

Note the caveat at the end:

> There are more than 250 European mammal species, so the ones that we covered here represent just 10% of the continent’s mammals. The fact that these species are doing well does not mean that all species are.

I do remember seeing tons of insects in more wild areas last time I visited France. I have a strong suspicion that insect biomass is critical to the existence of the animal foodchain & ecosystem.

The comeback has been happening for at least a decade, depending on the region you might aswell say 2 or even 3.

Sadly enough only alarmist messages hit the news these days, which really should be the headline here.

Today I saw my first wild peacock during lunch break, and since it was a young male there's probably a whole family of them. A nice addition to the frequent roe deer, pheasants, white and grey herons, crows, magpies, pigeons, nutrias, and occasional rabbits, hares, foxes and seagulls. I predict boars prowling in the parking lot within two years.

It's good to read good news every once in a while. Thanks for sharing!

This is great to see but, at the same time, how many kinds of fish and insects etc are we still losing every year?

Why is this happening? Are wild mammals adapting to human presence over time, or is it something else?

In Madrid I saw a squirrel a few months ago. And a dead fox on the highway.

Phenomenal news. Hope to see more of it across the globe.

Glad to see how much we are deindustrializing here. They will have much more room when the coming farming regulations starve several million again.

Awesome! It's just embarrasing and shameful how completely moronic and careless the Europeans have been over recent centuries.

And as a German I get really infuriated about von der Leyen torpedoing these efforts over a personal vendetta, like the conservative she is:

https://www.euractiv.com/section/agriculture-food/news/wolf-...

> The German region of Hannover has issued an official shooting permit for a wolf that killed one of the ponies of European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, who said earlier that the EU executive will reevaluate wolves’ protected status.

A wolf is doing wolf things but the president of the European Commission cant have that and wants to change the wolves' protected status. I hate this woman so much and I am sorry we inflicted her upon Europe.

She should recuse herself and stay out of it. Wolf/farmer conflict isn't black and white, though, I have sympathy for keepers of livestock as well. Here in the US it flares up all the time and simplistic romanticized arguments on either side are not helpful.

Here in Europe farmers get generous reparations from the state when wolves or bears kill their livestock. Many wolves (and also eagles and hawks) are illegally killed anyway, probably because hunters and farmers consider them enemies.

Farmers only get reparations for proven wolf kills, meaning you need to find the leftovers, and have them DNA-tested. That seems to work out for (as I've heard) less than half of the cases where lifestock is killed, usually no body is found.

There are also cases of a herd getting paniced, trampling down a fence, falling off a cliff, or ending up on a highway. In those cases proving wolf or bear involvement is even less likely.

> Farmers only get reparations for proven wolf kills, meaning you need to find the leftovers, and have them DNA-tested.

Of course. And this is done by two solid reasons.

1) Because farmers unavoidably will try to game the system to optimize the money obtained, until sucking your reserves dry.

Europe could tell you about thousands of cases of corruption in this subsides. We could write a book with the tricks and plots.

2) Because a surprisingly large amount of those "wolf kills" are in fact killed by dogs.

Feral and also domestic dogs. How do we know it? doing DNA tests.

If your dog kills a cow, why should I be blackmailed to pay for it? Is your responsibility, not mine. Feed your f*ng dog, don't let it roam around at night, pay insurance, and keep it lashed when close to my animals.

Even more, do you know who are the owners of those dogs in thousands of cases?, the same farmers that cry wolf.

Everybody knows it in the village, nobody will talk because... hey! I have a very ill sheep and the vet bills would be expensive, can I borrow your mastiff? the morons in the city will gave us free gold!

As a rancher in Texas, I have more problems with Cougars than wolves. Neither or an issue really. Wild pigs and coyotes are a problem and must be managed. Water and air quality (much improved since I was a child 40 years ago) and the depredations of apex predators (moronic politicians guided by ignorant electorate) are the real killers.

That said, there are places in N America where the reintroduction of wolves can be an issue if the numbers introduced are too zealous (too many for their natural food source).

We should really be encouraging wolves in areas with too many bureaucrats, rather than areas with ponies. I appreciate most of these areas are urban but foxes do fine there, so why not wolf packs?

In North America there have been 2 wolf fatalities in the past century. Sorry but I don't think wolves are a solution to keeping the bureaucrat population down

With a bit of genetic engineering though...

As far as I know they have to be pretty desperate to eat people. Poor things. Unfairly maligned.

Straw man fallacy. Nobody is asking to reintroduce packs of wild wolves in a big city.

I'm making an amused speculation rather than trying to represent someone else as having said it, and while I'm not seriously advocating it I wouldn't mind giving it a try. So no, not the straw man fallacy.

As a German for once I agree with her. Sorry but people introducing wolves and in such densely populated areas is just stupid. The wolf is already preying of domestic livestock. How is that not a problem? I understand the appeal for rewilding, but we just do not have the land for it and the people behind these programs do not seem to give two shits about the impact it has on the actual people living nearby.

a stark contrast to the findings and urgent recommendations of the COP15 Biodiversity Summit held just yesterday

Reply on news.ycombinator.com