Why the downvotes here? This is true. They are devastating. Obviously that doesn't matter to the urbanites whose livelihoods aren't put in danger.

In Spain there is like a 3% of cattle affected by canine (wolf+dog) attacks, and those loses are covered by the government. We talk about animals that are basically left alone in the nature without protection for weeks and months. In many cases we talk about foals or old and sick cattle and often in a reduced group of farmers that claim to lose 600 animals year after year, but don't even buy a dog, that is a little suspicious if we think about it.

So, maybe is not the bloodbath that many people assume

Sensible rewilding schemes include compensation. I am not trying to minimise how hard this is, but there's an economic solution. Also, wild dogs probably cause as much damage as wolves do.

Urbanites was a bit un-called for.

Urbanite is a descriptive word, not a epithet. It's called for whenever city-dwellers are being described.

Is always used as a deprecating term in this case. And insulting the same people that are taxed so the farmers can be heavily subsidized, is very unfair.

My brother got compensated, tractor sank into a beavers lodge, broke the axle, got 50 €. Was in the newspaper the day after that.

Now that the beaver has destroyed the road foundation several times and the public had to pay for it, over and over, the mood of the sub-urban dwellers is slowly shifting. Turns out wildlife is not so cute, if you have to pay out of pocket for it.

Rewilded European beavers are responsible for significant improvement in water retention in upland areas reducing flooding, soil loss, and damage to crops. It's not about "cute" its about the long term qui bono.

Maybe the road has to move. It's going to cost money to repair come what may, so maybe shifting it is the answer. I don't know, I just want to point out you're making huge assumptions about what the right answer IS, and also using "my specific therefore defines the general as wrong" arguments. Sure. Your brother had a bad beaver experience. European farmers who lost land to water runoff from bare hills are taking a different view.

It’s not about being cute. It’s about the biodiversity that reintroducing a lot of these predators creates. This is well-documented by the reintroduction of wolves in Yellowstone National Park in the USA which occurred in the 1990s.

Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN. The thread was noticeably degrading already, but your comment here was a big step in the wrong direction.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

In the case of Northern Europe, in some countries the wolf was already extinct and is now making a sporadic return. Example: the Netherlands.

This is a country almost entirely urbanized with hardly any wild habitat for the wolf to hunt in. So they do a lot of hunting in people's backyard. Killing sheep and dogs. They hunt frequently so damage is large.

Even a single case is very impactful. I recently saw footage of 3 wolves tearing apart somebody's dog. To the owner, that is devastating. Next, this is spread on Facebook, and soon the town is outraged. Surely you understand this won't last very long, somebody is going to take care of that wolf if it happens a few more times.

I love wolves, I want them to come back and want them to thrive. But at least for the Netherlands, it just doesn't work. We don't have the natural habitat.

Wolves are very risk averse and generally only attack pets or livestock ( as long as they are not roaming alone in the mountains unprotected ) if they have no other choice (i.e. their natural habitat was destroyed). The last thing wolves want to do is to roam around the countryside looking for pets or cattle because that greatly increases their chance of encountering humans.

And in any case most attacks on pets and humans are by wolf-dog hybrid which are much more aggressive (and less fearful of humans) than wolves.

> Unnecessary if we allow wolves to be hunted.

So more people die in car crashes?. Good idea

In my neighborhood people keep complaining about coyotes killing their outdoor cats. The solution is simple: keep your cats indoors.

I don't see the coyote quote you're referring to, but coyotes are pretty adept at urban life. They even make it into NYC, weirdly. They like the rat and cat populations there and have been seen in Central Park with somewhat regularity. There's no need to fret about the population of coyotes.

Fun fact, trying to cull coyotes can actually cause the population to boom. They're remarkably adaptable creatures and very smart, to boot.

https://www.projectcoyote.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/PC_...