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.
seriously, what are these terrible consequences?