Despite what the article says, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) doesn't consider the wolves that inhabit the Eurasian continent to be endangered [1].
They have individual ratings for different regions on that page, and they rate Germany/West Poland as Critically Endangered, so the article isn't just making it up. Maybe a more accurate wording would be "endangered species in Germany".
Some interesting notes in the summary: 1) wolves are one of beneficiaries of political instability (see the section on Balkan states). 2) in case of need, rescue from the Russian population is possible (section 7).
Is not endangered as species, but locally can be different. In 2016 there were only 46 reproductive pairs in the entire Scandinavia for example; and Denmark has in 2017 their first and only reproductive pair in 200 years.
yay! With hunters who keep the woods overpopulated with deer etc. (because as they age they give better trophies) I can only hope that we will get even more packs in the future throughout the country.
I have read an amazing report on how wolves changed the ecological system of yellowstone national park for the better (not quite sure which article specifically , believe it was https://www.yellowstonepark.com/things-to-do/wolf-reintroduc...) which makes me even more enthusiastic.
It is amazing because of the ripple implications: deer are scared of wolves therefore they don't eat on forests where they can be easily ambushed therefore trees have a better chance of growing therefore they make more shade on the river banks therefore trouts have better places to lay eggs.
In the end: wolves bring more trouts. Who would have thought of that.
> and found that elk rarely changed their feeding behavior in response to wolves.
Perhaps a more useful study would have been to compare elkfeeding behavior pre-1995 to post wolf introduction. By 2007 maybe the Elk had just got the hang of living around wolves. Maybe their behavior had already changed?
Those are the questions we'll never be able to answer for sure. All we can observe are correlations and cannot draw certain causations from it. Ecosystems are complex and its variables change constantly. The appearance of wolves was one notable change, but not the only one. Others have suggested drought as a possible factor for the change in elk population.
Which one of the explanations is the truth, I can't possibly tell. Both sound plausible to a layman, and neither can be proven definitively.
Oh please.. I was a kid in Polesie in eastern Poland, huge forests all around. Played in the woods almost every day in the summer/winter vacations, never even encountered a wolf, despite them being there.
Stray dogs are a bigger threat. Rabid bats or foxes are a bigger threat. Ticks are a MUCH bigger threat. And if you drive a car - you're much more likely to kill a human being than all the wolves in the world combined.
50 years, whole world - over 211 deaths. ~5 per year.
> In the half-century up to 2002, there were eight fatal attacks in Europe and Russia, three in North America, and more than 200 in south Asia. [1]
For comparison, just in one year, just in USA - around 20-30.
> At least 4.5–4.7 million Americans are bitten by dogs every year and, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 20 to 30 of these result in death [2]
Wolves avoid people.
There's something irrational in people's reaction to wolves.
You know what is a concrete danger for my kids (and all other kids, in both rural and cityareas)?
- cars
and if you worry about animals
- dogs (which are wolves, bread for insanity and not fearing humans, and sometimes trained to attack people)
- chicken (salmonella probably kills a few kids a year)
I fear boars much more than the wolves living in our woods. Wolves rarely attack humans and even if it is usually associated with rabies rather than an actual hunt.
If you happen to walk into a wolf, it's probably gonna bite you and then leave you alone when you run away.
No worries, by the time my kids manage to run into a wolf they are already run over by cars multiple times on the way to the forest. Or stung to death by wasps, bees, ... bitten by the neighbors dog, attacked by a boar, drowned in some water, ...
I have to say, I can observe some mixed standards in this regard:
"Deer eat saplings" - "Kill the deer!"
"Wolves eat livestock" - "Don't shoot, get a fence."
I guess you can always argue that the ecosystem used to have wolves (and elks) in Germany. So the restauration is I think a good thing. The only issue I found with this wish is that consequently, probably lions should be brought back to southern europe, etc.
The question is, is the current landscape in Germany an adequate habitat for a predator that claims large territories? Last time there was a native wolf population in Germany, there was no Autobahn, no large corn fields for bioethanol and ground-breeders had plenty of cover in the shrubs between small parcels of land. The drastic changes in land use are one of the reasons Germany now has a growing wild boar population again, where in the 1940s large areas had no boar at all. Boar hunting is more effective than ever (night vision, cameras, etc) but can't offset the exploding food supply.
When wolves return, we're not going to get some romantic version of fairy tale wild nature back - Germany doesn't have large enough preservation areas for that to happen[1]. Anyone who claims to be able to predict the future of wolf in Germany is just full of it - both sides of the debate.
[1]The Dutch Oostvaardersplassen is one example of what can happen when you naively try to turn tiny areas into a "natural wilderness habitat".
It demonstrates how going from cultured land to a natural reserve doesn't necessarily lead to a balanced ecosystem. There you have a herbivore population that requires culling in order to prevent mass starvation from exhausting the food supply.
In the absence of natural predators the rangers shoot animals that are unlikely to survive. It is quite common for 30 to 60 per cent of the population to be killed in this way. After a cull, the vegetation has a chance to recover and this will get the first natural afforestation of the area under way.
Wolves are vilified because of their threat to livestock. Farmers kill wolves to protect their animals.
The return of wolves is good news for people living in forested areas overpopulated by deer. Without wolves, the deer population grows unchecked. The deer overgraze which hurts plant growth.
The rhetoric reveals your biasedness: Where did I even mention attacks? Nowhere.
But, because you know that my statement is correct, that the majority of people in rural areas don't like having wolfpack-neighbors, you've seem to feel obliged to make ridicule of their fears.
Its clearly an overreaction. An impulse I just can guess what triggered it.
Is it maybe that I pointed out, that the romanticization of things ('yay!') is usually done by people who don't have to live with the outcomes of it? And precisely because they don't have to live with that are usually much more powerful and likely to get their romanticized ideals poured into legislation (e.g. wealth redistribution vs. not being dependent on entry level jobs, social housing projects vs. not living in them, promoting preditors vs. living in gentrified urban areas etc.)?
Is it maybe that at the core of the romaticizer's actions is the aim for Deutungshoheit (narrative control) via claiming "pureness", which is most hurt by showing its very basic inconsistencies?
Is it because applying a 80s-moustache statement glass wearing Hipster face to "Yay! Wolfes are back" lays bare the author's arrogance?
I've never hunted in Germany, and New Zealand has very different hunting, but from all the Europeans that I've talked to, deer hunting is a managed system.
It's not as simple as "keep the woods overpopulated". For starters, you tend to want to keep a good bloodline going. So hunters will cull off the deer of weaker bloodlines.
You also don't want excessive competition, because you don't want malnourished deer. So there is incentive to keep the numbers at a manageable level.
Lastly, there is actually a legal minimum number of deer that hunters need to shoot a year. They are required to harvest a certain number of animals.
There are several associations for hunters in Germany, and one, the ecological hunters association is questioning how deer is managed. Don't know how the google translate translation holds up for https://www.moz.de/artikel-ansicht/dg/0/1/1459507 but maybe it is an interesting read.
It really seems to me that a predator is a missing piece in the eco system at the moment. Hunting and quotas is a bit like introducing a quick hack you need to maintain over the years, that requires introducing more hacks over time to keep the system alive.
And also our ancester's best friend, saving people in distress, guarding our kids and houses and helping humans in a miriad of ways every single day. Their economic (positive) impact for humans is invaluable. Is a priceless species for us.
[1] http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/3746/1