Are wolves even a threat? Outside of movies theyre pretty harmless.
In the Netherlands there are 14 wolf packs and 144 wolves in a geographical small area where the surrounding farms are often full of a lot sheep.
But it’s also easy to imagine that if you can become aware of the presents of wolves sufficiently early enough and reliably enough before they attack your animals then you have a chance to prevent an attack. And if you prevent enough attacks it becomes maybe harder than sticking to natural prey.
Wolves don't like taking risks. Interacting with humans is definitely risky. Detecting wolves reliably early and responding, either in person if that can be done quick enough, or setting off responses, ideally followed up by a human visit could well result in the wolves avoiding that farm in any case. The extend to which this can work in practice is something that needs to be determine through research and pilots. Wolves are very smart, so if tech is going to be able to help here, then the tech has to be very capable. The start with pilots and research two elements are needed. People with tech, but also people in the affected areas with a willingness to collaborate.
The current highly polarized environment is throwing road blocks against such collaboration.
The current situation is such that owners are unaware of the presence of wolves at their borders, so there is currently also not a lot of perceived risk associated with attacking live stock. A useful goal is to start to change that. And the people who read hacker news I'm sure that think of many ways to change the status quo. My system is one example.
Sadly, a lot time went by without trying these methods. None the less, one should try.
I the past I have offered free equipment to people to test who had been publicly expressing concern about the arrival of the wolf but they would not accept it.
But maybe that can still change.
Both times I alerted the farmer who went out in his car and then a little while later they dispersed.
And I also don’t believe those two times they were a threat to the horses, more likely just curious. But I didn’t have the full visibility enough to be sure as there was just one camera. So I called the farmer to be in the safe side.
Now I think there are no more wolves there. It’s been weeks since Insaw them. They have either dispersed or killed on the roads.
I've heard from my farmer friends that not all sheep declared to have been bitten by wolves have in fact been bitten by wolves. There is some insurance fraud with that. Not sure how widespread
Suddenly statistics will show that no sheep or cows die anymore by illness, accidents, old age or pregnancy gone bad, after government starts paying for wolf attacks in some area.
Every single time, farmers will soon realize that paying for medicines for an old cow is a worse deal than borrowing a mastiff from a friend and being paid. People tried to be paid for the bony rests of a barbecue. (Yep. really). People tried to be paid twice or thrice for the same cow, just moving the corpse around. For some reason wolves always start eating the most yummy parts of the cows first: the plastic identification tags in the ears.
In Spain some farmers never ever sold a cow or paid taxes. Their entire activity for decades is: buying foals in a province by 50 euros, moving to another and leaving then alone in isolated places known to have wolves, to cash 150 euros of our taxes by each foal. Rinse and repeat. Ka-ching.
Are you kidding? Humans often had a fear of wolves throughout history. And rightfully so.
But the reverse is also true. Hence wolves tend to stay away from people so encounters are rare. But where not, human-wolf close encounters can end deadly sometimes. Even for the humans (especially children).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wolf_attacks_in_North_...
https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/historyculture/wolf-managemen...
This map shows how now there are nearly 7,000 in the contiguous states of the USA:
Looking the other way for a really long time results in crazy situations.
"The country with the most extensive historical record is France, where nearly 10,000 fatal attacks were documented from 1200 to 1920.[1][2][3] A study by the Norwegian Institute of Nature Research showed that there were eight fatal attacks in Europe and Russia, three in North America, and more than 200 in south Asia in the half-century up to 2002.[4] The updated edition of the study revealed 498 attacks on humans worldwide for the years 2002 to 2020, with 25 deaths, including 14 attributed to rabies."
As another commenter noted, this is most likely due to wolf populations decimated by hunting and/or habitat destruction.
In North America, those numbers make sense as eg. US is relatively sparsely populated compared to other developed countries. And most wolves will reside in areas less-populated still, and/or national parks. So encounters are rare. US != rest of world.
So it's in same order of shark attacks. Which is not how most humans die.
Personally I'm not scared of wolves. Maybe throw some stones at one if encounted, to keep it wary of humans. Rather than try & be friendly, and have it attack a child later on.
But don't be naive about them. They're among the biggest canines, and not used to / bred to be human-friendly. Give them space.