
Return of wolves to Germany pits farmers against environmentalists - pseudolus
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/17/germany-wolves-farmers-environmentalists
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yummypaint
"they carried out 472 attacks, an increase of 66% over the previous year. The
number of killed, injured or missing livestock – mostly sheep and goats – rose
55%, to 1,667"

That really isn't that many lost animals. Why can't farmers who lose livestock
to wolves just be re-reimbursed? It could be from public funds or an
environmental group could step up.

[https://www.ams.usda.gov/market-news/sheep-auction-
reports](https://www.ams.usda.gov/market-news/sheep-auction-reports) Order of
magnitude-wise: <$1000 /sheep (maybe more if its a fancy wool sheep? then
maybe ~$10k ? So an overestimate would be maybe $2 million-ish per year? Maybe
as high as $20 million if they are all capable of photosynthesis. Small
potatoes, especially in Germany.

~~~
herogreen
French TV channel Arte aired an interesting documentary in 2017 that looked at
the cohabitation between wolfes returned from Italy and sheep farmers from
south of France. The farmers presented in the documentary have small farms of
100s of sheep maximum, such that it is common that a farmer "know" most sheeps
from its farm. These sheeps are outside except in winter or to sleep during
the night.

In this documentary they say that the problems are that:

\- sheeps that are attacked but not killed will run away and empty themselves
of their blood and the farmer will have to finish them after seeing a lot of
suffering

\- farmers want to avoid this suffering and this is very stressful

\- herds that have been attacked will remain terrified for days

\- wolves are very smart and will wait for the right instant to attack

\- wolves are "mean": they will kill more sheeps than they could eat

The documentary seems to suggest that the best solution is not drones nor more
people around herds nor new ways to raise the sheeps nor locking herds inside
buildings all day but to shot at any wolf that would get too close from the
herd, because wolves are very intelligent and would soon realize that it is
not in their interest to attack sheeps (they should be able to find food in
the forest by hunting wild animals such as deers which would help control
their population).

I could not find a link to the documentary (in French) but I watched it online
recently.

So at least for small farms in south France, if I understood the documentary
correctly, it is more a problem of legislation that ties the hand of farmers
than it is a problem of money.

