That is a glorified trail camera, really does very little to help people live with wolves. What does is a strict hunting quota; the government decides how many wolves there should be, rather than nature.

Cameras do not actively protect people or livestock, it just monitors and retroactively actions are taken. I prefer the German method where they make the wolves fear people.

https://youtu.be/hmVowVaWUms

[dead]

And feral pigs… is that a problem in the EU? It’s apparently a huge and growing problem in the USA.

They do in Germany as part of a shepherds program. I applaus this, as the issue is a slightly different in the Netherlands; it will otherwise move wolves in close proximity with people. It sounds bad, but those sheeps that have been attacked might have protected from wolves wandering in more urban areas (this is already happening).

It is the ignorance or pleasing all attitude in the government that creates these situations. In the Netherlands they have a minority coalition, so they hand the other smaller parties whatever they want to get their vote. And what happens, they allow wolves to attack livestock and pets, as free-roaming wolves are more important than people... Until the day comes that it's not the dog that gets attacked, but a little boy or girl while walking the dog. They have already started to enter the borders of a few cities in the area where I am from in the Netherlands. Rightfully so, German shepherds have mentioned: "we thought the Dutch were smarter", as they allow this to happen without measures in place.

And in Canada we've been having a moment with wolves littler cousin:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/child-bit-coyote-whit...

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/orleans-park-closed-coyote-at...

[flagged]

[dead]

A healthy, non-rabid wolf killing a human is way less likely than being killed by a lightning strike.

Farmers are also heavily subsidized in Europe.

The place with the healthiest wolves population in the entire EU is a small hills area on Spain called "mountains of the snake". Spectacular place with extensive oak forests, a big water reservoir with boats and rocky islands, and even a sand beach. People adapted and definitely can live with them. They even can spot the benefits.

Most of the people living there are elders. People roam alone the shady paths of the oak forests to pick mushrooms. Shepherds with 300 animals don't lost a single one by wolves. This place has one of the healthiest deer population with bigger trophies in the country, because the wolves. Many young families could make a live here from nature tourism, also because the wolves. Absolutely spectacular place. Until it was left burn entirely a few years ago in a very suspicious chain of events

And... guess what?. No one man, women or little child attacked for a century. More people are killed by hunters each year than by wolves. More people are maimed by bulls and cows with calves. The smaller subspecies of Iberian wolves don't want to hang with us or to be near us in any way.

I live in an extremely rural county. There are plenty of wolves here. None of them hunt for humans. Ever.

I don't feel your proposal to exterminate all dogs will be popular.

Start with humans

Oh there no denying that they are a threat to live stock that are not protected. And sometimes even when they, as the sometimes can get over fences.

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.

Most are not. "Problem wolves" do show up sometimes. In Netherlands we had "Bram" GW3237m. First, he just followed people seemingly unafraid. Then he attacked a jogger (who ran away) and a 6-year old boy (grabbed him by the chest and tried to pull him in the bushes, bystanders hit the wolf with sticks so he ran away). Judge in Utrecht gave an order to shoot the wolf dead, which was done and now it's back to just sheep being bitten.

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

My grandmother would tell me how her mom was terrified of wolves in her small village. It was a true problem back in the day

> Are wolves even a threat? Outside of movies theyre pretty harmless.

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).