Never fear. We have the technology to help people live with wolves.

https://wildlifesecurityinnovations.com/projects/wolves-belg...

With the most wolf videos here.

We have a solar powered thermal local AI wolf detection system that’s been in a field in Belgium for more than 8 months now, monitoring the wolves there. Thermal image motion detection can detection them at much greater distances than PIR sensors and of course in complete darkness.

The biggest barrier at the moment to living with wolves, if you true away the human resistance to the idea, is reliable detection for early warning prevention.

This is not such a hard problem with computer vision at the level that it is these days. We’ve made it more effective by coupling it with thermal imaging camera modules.

Now we just need people willing to want to want to work with such pilot project, which turns out to be a pretty big problem.

However, it’s possible that a few influential success stories can bring change to the situation. But there has to be a start first and certainly when this started to be a problem, anything along the lines of prevention was seen as a barrier towards killing them which is what the solution in many people’s eyes is.

▲

Stevvo a day ago | parent | next [-]

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.

▲

hcfman a day ago | parent [-]

There's the killing again.

And no, it's not a glorified trail camera. Very different.

Everyone wants to kill before trying measures to keep people and their animals apart.

I don't think you can say it does nothing to help people live with wolves because it's not being tried. It's not being tried, because people being convince the only thing that helps is killing everything that requires a bit of effort to live with. I realize it's very human to destroy and kill, but I think we should strive to do better.

Humans have already stolen so much from nature and the animals, don't you think a little effort to do better would be a good thing?

▲

dvt 17 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> There's the killing again.

Do you not understand how ecosystems work? Or how populations of predator/prey are in various (usually) oscillatory states?

> Humans have already stolen so much from nature and the animals

I'm confused, are you saying humans are somehow not part of nature?

	▲	hcfman 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Sure they are. But try mentally reversing the situation. If any other single species occupied and changed the landscape as much as humans they would be viewed by humans as the most horrific plague on earth. So I'm just a little empathy would be well placed here. A little effort to try and co-exist with the other inhabitants would not be out of place and as a bonus you can think a little better of yourself.

▲

gonzalohm a day ago | parent | prev [-]

A lot of people are like that when dealing with nature. Oh I don't want squirrels in my backyard, let me put some poison...

We really don't deserve a place on this planet

▲

pocksuppet 17 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That's a fine attitude for squirrels which are ultimately harmless, but wolves can attack people, although that's somewhat rare, not like bears which attack you every time.

Wikipedia says wolves are more likely to attack humans if they've been living around humans for a while - they learn that humans are viable prey, not that humans are harmless.

▲

jltsiren 16 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Bear attacks depend on the (sub)species. European brown bears are very shy and much less likely to attack people than wolves.

Finnish people traditionally respected bears but were not afraid of them. Historical records mostly tell of two kinds of bear attacks. Either children / old people herding cattle in the forest accidentally got too close to a bear cub, or adult men were hunting bears and something went wrong.

	▲	hcfman 12 hours ago \| parent [-]
		We have systems in Finland as well. We have detected Lynx a number of times. Later this year some systems will move to bear country.

▲

gonzalohm 16 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Climate change also kills people and we don't do anything about it

	▲	hcfman 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		There is a lot not to be proud of about human behavior. Still.. one has to try to be a little positive about there being hope as hopelessness is contagious.

▲

micromacrofoot 18 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

same with mosquitoes, let's just spray or fog and kill all the other bugs too... including ones that kill mosquitos

▲

nullstyle 18 hours ago | parent [-]

I’ll argue mozzies are responsible for more suffering than humans any day of the week. They need to go. Lets just get our targeting good enough.

	▲	micromacrofoot 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		the good news is that if we can't figure out how to target them specifically soon, we'll have already killed all the side effects

▲

idiotsecant 17 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

... What do you think wolves do all day?

	▲	pvaldes 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		They mostly sleep and play all day. As anybody with a chonky dog at home can confirm. And they provide premium ecological services all night that would be really expensive to cover by ourselves.

▲

gbraad 17 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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

	▲	hcfman 12 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yes. Old camera do that. The systems I developed are. It based on microcontrollers. But secure boot Linux systems. They detect wolves within 2 seconds on pi based version, sub second on the jetson based ones. Then websocket connected subscribers speak a loud alert to wake the person up and auto load the camera view over the permanently up VPN. The person monitoring can then verify on how ever many cameras are connected and illicit many different kinds of responses. This is not a standard wild camera setup. I’m using high resolution 640x512 res thermal modules to see night and day. Our system is already being used in Greenland for polar bears and has detected bears three times now from a long distance and the safety group were able to chase it away. There it’s monitoring 22 cameras with a single jetson. And indeed, the idea is very rapid detection and validation and then potentially remote active response. It has all the necessary controls.

▲

therealdkz a day ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]