27 ms·

Wolves are reconquering Europe. Can people learn to live with them?

46 points by stared 4mo ago

hcfman 4mo ago
Never fear. We have the technology to help people live with wolves. https://wildlifesecurityinnovations.com/projects/wolves-belgium/ https://wildlifesecurityinnovations.com/projects/wolves-belg... With the most wolf videos here. https://youtube.com/@hcftube1 https://youtube.com/@hcftube1 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.
- therealdkz 3mo ago
  [dead]
- Stevvo 3mo ago
  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 3mo ago
    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?
    - gonzalohm 3mo ago
      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
      - micromacrofoot 3mo ago
        same with mosquitoes, let's just spray or fog and kill all the other bugs too... including ones that kill mosquitos
        nullstyle 3mo ago
        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 3mo ago
        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 3mo ago
        ... What do you think wolves do all day?
- gbraad 3mo ago
  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 https://youtu.be/hmVowVaWUms
  - hcfman 3mo ago
    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.
the_real_cher 3mo ago
Are wolves even a threat? Outside of movies theyre pretty harmless.
- hcfman 3mo ago
  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.
  - hcfman 3mo ago
    My system has on two occasions alerted my wolves showing an interest in a field of horses instead of just travelling by. Both times I alerted the farmer who went out in his car and then a little while later they dispersed.
sriacha 3mo ago
Highly recommend the book 'Of Wolves and Men' by Barry Lopez
warumdarum 3mo ago
No, because predators follow exponential curves leading to prey collapses during winters where hungry animals will abandon shyness to hunt for humans in suburbs.
- idiotsecant 3mo ago
  I live in an extremely rural county. There are plenty of wolves here. None of them hunt for humans. Ever.
  - pocksuppet 3mo ago
    Wikipedia says wolves don't habitually attack humans but they will, and the more contact they have with humans, the more likely they are to attack them (they learn that humans are not wolf predators which makes them viable targets)
  - gbraad 3mo ago
    This is not the same for places like the Veluwe and Utrecht in the Netherlands, where wolves have attacked people already. They do not fear people as much... Forest rich areas are close to urban areas, and they have been spotted in border regions already.
- pvaldes 3mo ago
  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.
refactor_master 3mo ago
Some years ago people also said “Japanese bears are harmless, shy and fear humans” and now the country is experiencing a slowly approaching bear-pocalypse, with bear attacks occurring in densely populated suburbs. I don’t see how wolves in Europe would be uniquely different if it follows the same trajectory. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj41vn9q81ko https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj41vn9q81ko
- morkalork 3mo ago
  And in Canada we've been having a moment with wolves littler cousin: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/child-bit-coyote-whitby-durham-police-9.7246085 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/child-bit-coyote-whit... https://ottawacitizen.com/news/orleans-park-closed-coyote-attack https://ottawacitizen.com/news/orleans-park-closed-coyote-at...
  - FpUser 3mo ago
    I see those nearly daily. some of those are not that little. They've killed dogs and attacked humans. Government as usual does not give a flying fuck. Well I am pretty sure if one of them or their relative gets killed they would instantly declare a war against coyotes.
    - jltsiren 3mo ago
      The average dog is a greater danger to people than the average urban coyote, at least in the US. Mostly because dogs are not afraid of people, and because any moron is allowed to have a dog and train it badly.
    - albedoa 3mo ago
      Oh just they wait. They will be real sorry when this highly improbably event happens.
  - gbraad 3mo ago
    Are you allowed to take precautionary actions, like a weapon or spray? As in Europe that is not even considered/disallowed for the safety of the animal.
cboyardee 3mo ago
[dead]
gbraad 3mo ago
Yes and no. In Germany they have a county that at least helps to make the wolves fear people, by actively go after them with dogs, while in the Netherlands people are waiting for the first fatal victim before action will be taken, as currently the animal concerns outweigh those of people. For now, farmers have to pay the price; while they get a small compensation from most governments it will never offset the loss. So yeah, this is a heated topic. Note: https://youtu.be/hmVowVaWUms https://youtu.be/hmVowVaWUms about the German shepherd (in Dutch, but CC can help to understand). Just search on YouTube for Wolf Germany or Europe. And yes, the place I am from these wolves have started to enter urban areas (Veluwe).
- pwthornton 3mo ago
  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.
  - gbraad 3mo ago
    Are you a farmer speaking out of experience? I can tell you from family that your perception is wrong. This subsidizing is not a EU standard practice, and not for all sectors of agricultural development. This idea that subsidizing offsets the loss of livestock sounds weird to me, as is the risk of a human attack. Europe is far more densely populated than most other places that have to deal with bears, coyotes or so, plus... You are allowed to take precautions, that we are not; a spray might harm the animal.
    - deleted 3mo ago
      [deleted]
    - AlotOfReading 3mo ago
      The EU has a €300B program directly subsidizing farmers [0]. To quote the wiki page: The [EAGF] consumes a large part of the general budget of the European Union. Apparently the overarching CAP program consumes something like 30+% of the budget, so I'd love to know what you consider "heavily subsidized" if this doesn't merit. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Agricultural_Guarantee_Fund https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Agricultural_Guarante...
deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]
RickJWagner 3mo ago
If they keep writing articles about this, eventually nobody will believe them. (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy_Who_Cried_Wolf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy_Who_Cried_Wolf
vlian2088 3mo ago
outside of nature preserves, all species that threaten humans should be exterminated with extreme prejudice.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3mo ago
  Start with humans
- nitwit005 3mo ago
  I don't feel your proposal to exterminate all dogs will be popular.
robtro 3mo ago
Just get proper dogs again to protect the livestock. I really don't understand how people can't just look at how farmers in areas with wolves handle it and how we handled it in the past. Eliminating all predators is also not that great then you get tons of hogs and deer etc. People in other regions are still alive with way more dangerous predators than here in Europe I personally think it's more an education problem that people get way too close to wild animals just have a look at any social media and you see that most people have no basic education about how wild animals should be handled.
- gbraad 3mo ago
  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).
- e40 3mo ago
  And feral pigs… is that a problem in the EU? It’s apparently a huge and growing problem in the USA.
taffydavid 3mo ago
Fun fact: Ireland used to be referred to as "wolf-land" by the English because the island was overrun with wolves. The last wolf was killed here in 1786, now we're one of the only places in Europe with no wolves, apart from a handful of European ones in captivity.

46 points by stared 4mo ago

Never fear. We have the technology to help people live with wolves. https://wildlifesecurityinnovations.com/projects/wolves-belgium/ https://wildlifesecurityinnovations.com/projects/wolves-belg... With the most wolf videos here. https://youtube.com/@hcftube1 https://youtube.com/@hcftube1 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.

therealdkz 3mo ago
[dead]
Stevvo 3mo ago
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 3mo ago
  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?
  - gonzalohm 3mo ago
    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
    - micromacrofoot 3mo ago
      same with mosquitoes, let's just spray or fog and kill all the other bugs too... including ones that kill mosquitos
      - nullstyle 3mo ago
        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 3mo ago
        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 3mo ago
      ... What do you think wolves do all day?
gbraad 3mo ago
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 https://youtu.be/hmVowVaWUms
- hcfman 3mo ago
  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.

the_real_cher 3mo ago

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

hcfman 3mo ago
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.
- hcfman 3mo ago
  My system has on two occasions alerted my wolves showing an interest in a field of horses instead of just travelling by. Both times I alerted the farmer who went out in his car and then a little while later they dispersed.

sriacha 3mo ago

Highly recommend the book 'Of Wolves and Men' by Barry Lopez

warumdarum 3mo ago

No, because predators follow exponential curves leading to prey collapses during winters where hungry animals will abandon shyness to hunt for humans in suburbs.

idiotsecant 3mo ago
I live in an extremely rural county. There are plenty of wolves here. None of them hunt for humans. Ever.
- pocksuppet 3mo ago
  Wikipedia says wolves don't habitually attack humans but they will, and the more contact they have with humans, the more likely they are to attack them (they learn that humans are not wolf predators which makes them viable targets)
- gbraad 3mo ago
  This is not the same for places like the Veluwe and Utrecht in the Netherlands, where wolves have attacked people already. They do not fear people as much... Forest rich areas are close to urban areas, and they have been spotted in border regions already.
pvaldes 3mo ago
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.

refactor_master 3mo ago

Some years ago people also said “Japanese bears are harmless, shy and fear humans” and now the country is experiencing a slowly approaching bear-pocalypse, with bear attacks occurring in densely populated suburbs. I don’t see how wolves in Europe would be uniquely different if it follows the same trajectory. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj41vn9q81ko https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj41vn9q81ko

morkalork 3mo ago
And in Canada we've been having a moment with wolves littler cousin: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/child-bit-coyote-whitby-durham-police-9.7246085 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/child-bit-coyote-whit... https://ottawacitizen.com/news/orleans-park-closed-coyote-attack https://ottawacitizen.com/news/orleans-park-closed-coyote-at...
- FpUser 3mo ago
  I see those nearly daily. some of those are not that little. They've killed dogs and attacked humans. Government as usual does not give a flying fuck. Well I am pretty sure if one of them or their relative gets killed they would instantly declare a war against coyotes.
  - jltsiren 3mo ago
    The average dog is a greater danger to people than the average urban coyote, at least in the US. Mostly because dogs are not afraid of people, and because any moron is allowed to have a dog and train it badly.
  - albedoa 3mo ago
    Oh just they wait. They will be real sorry when this highly improbably event happens.
- gbraad 3mo ago
  Are you allowed to take precautionary actions, like a weapon or spray? As in Europe that is not even considered/disallowed for the safety of the animal.

cboyardee 3mo ago

[dead]

gbraad 3mo ago

Yes and no. In Germany they have a county that at least helps to make the wolves fear people, by actively go after them with dogs, while in the Netherlands people are waiting for the first fatal victim before action will be taken, as currently the animal concerns outweigh those of people. For now, farmers have to pay the price; while they get a small compensation from most governments it will never offset the loss. So yeah, this is a heated topic. Note: https://youtu.be/hmVowVaWUms https://youtu.be/hmVowVaWUms about the German shepherd (in Dutch, but CC can help to understand). Just search on YouTube for Wolf Germany or Europe. And yes, the place I am from these wolves have started to enter urban areas (Veluwe).

pwthornton 3mo ago
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.
- gbraad 3mo ago
  Are you a farmer speaking out of experience? I can tell you from family that your perception is wrong. This subsidizing is not a EU standard practice, and not for all sectors of agricultural development. This idea that subsidizing offsets the loss of livestock sounds weird to me, as is the risk of a human attack. Europe is far more densely populated than most other places that have to deal with bears, coyotes or so, plus... You are allowed to take precautions, that we are not; a spray might harm the animal.
  - deleted 3mo ago
    [deleted]
  - AlotOfReading 3mo ago
    The EU has a €300B program directly subsidizing farmers [0]. To quote the wiki page: The [EAGF] consumes a large part of the general budget of the European Union. Apparently the overarching CAP program consumes something like 30+% of the budget, so I'd love to know what you consider "heavily subsidized" if this doesn't merit. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Agricultural_Guarantee_Fund https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Agricultural_Guarante...

deleted 3mo ago

[deleted]

RickJWagner 3mo ago

If they keep writing articles about this, eventually nobody will believe them. (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy_Who_Cried_Wolf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy_Who_Cried_Wolf

vlian2088 3mo ago

outside of nature preserves, all species that threaten humans should be exterminated with extreme prejudice.

2OEH8eoCRo0 3mo ago
Start with humans
nitwit005 3mo ago
I don't feel your proposal to exterminate all dogs will be popular.

robtro 3mo ago

Just get proper dogs again to protect the livestock. I really don't understand how people can't just look at how farmers in areas with wolves handle it and how we handled it in the past. Eliminating all predators is also not that great then you get tons of hogs and deer etc. People in other regions are still alive with way more dangerous predators than here in Europe I personally think it's more an education problem that people get way too close to wild animals just have a look at any social media and you see that most people have no basic education about how wild animals should be handled.

gbraad 3mo ago
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).
e40 3mo ago
And feral pigs… is that a problem in the EU? It’s apparently a huge and growing problem in the USA.

taffydavid 3mo ago

Fun fact: Ireland used to be referred to as "wolf-land" by the English because the island was overrun with wolves. The last wolf was killed here in 1786, now we're one of the only places in Europe with no wolves, apart from a handful of European ones in captivity.