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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
