From the BBC:
Throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a number of species disappeared from the Swiss Alps: the brown bear, the lynx and the wolf. The high mountain environment, so often regarded as pure and untouched, had been ravaged by one particular predator - humans.
Now all three species are back. The bears and the wolves returned naturally*, the lynx has been successfully reintroduced. But the dream of people and animals living harmoniously side by side has turned, for some alpine farming communities, into a bit of a nightmare.
No shit, Sherlock. Our ancestors had good reasons for wiping out wolves, it wasn't just a whim...
Just this month a sheep farmer close to the Swiss capital Bern woke to find seven of his 35 sheep dead, their throats ripped out by a wolf that had apparently jumped over the electric fence designed to protect the flock.
And inevitably...
Farmers are increasingly impatient. Last year they called a referendum demanding the law be changed to make it easier to hunt and kill problematic wolves. Swiss voters, most of whom live in cities, said no.
The French on the other hand seem to be taking a more robust approach. From The Daily Mail:
A zoo in southern France has been closed down temporarily by local authorities after a pack of wolves escaped from their enclosure and roamed around the site during visiting hours.
A total of nine wolves escaped from their enclosure last weekend at Trois Vallées Zoo in Montredon-Labessonnie, roughly 60 miles east of Toulouse. Four wolves were shot dead due to 'dangerous behaviour', before the five remaining animals were anaesthetised and returned to their enclosures by local officials who were called to the scene.
* The article says that wolves came up from Italy. Wiki says it has been strictly protected in Italy since the 1970s, so this is on them. The bears seem to have come from the east, via Austria.
Friday, 7 January 2022
Wolf news
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10 comments:
About a year ago three wolves escaped from a zoo on the Charente/Deux-Sevres border in France. It took several weeks to capture or kill them. It was a nightmare for the local farmers.
"Four wolves were shot dead due to 'dangerous behaviour'"
Otherwise known as 'being wolves'.
D, at least they got it sorted in the end.
JM, as the cool kids say "Wolves gonna wolf".
JuliaM - precisely.
This is the problem with the whole idea of "rewilding": you end up with a whole lot of wild species that have no natural predators, because no-one wants to reintroduce bears and wolves.
B, but some people DO want to allow wolves and bears back in. Or make sure there are plenty of tigers in India.
Which is a fat lot of use because bears and wolves have no natural predators (unless they eat each other?).
Bears and wolves don't need predators, they are predators and therefore their numbers are governed by the availability of food, unlike herbivores which have evolved having their numbers governed by predators. For instance, there are too many badgers around now, because their only remaining predator, man, has, by and large given up his predatory habits and so they are now competing with other species, like hedgehogs, for the available food, to the detriment of the hedgehogs.
B: "their numbers are governed by the availability of food"
Sure. If they're eating deer, I suppose nobody will notice too much. But when they attack sheep, cows, pets and human beings, that logic doesn't really help.
I meant in a balanced ecosystem, i.e. like it was before humans came and f*cked it all up.
On humans screwing up our saving of the planet(road to hell and unintended consequences)
See here for The Wild Horses of Chernobyl and human no intervention:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnL8ha3qrs0
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