[citilife]

> I understand, the sheep farmers are getting a lot of sheep killed.

https://www.newsweek.com/wolf-kills-nine-year-critically-inj...

https://a-z-animals.com/blog/meet-the-worlds-deadliest-wolf-...

https://wolf.org/headlines/the-child-eating-wolves-of-turku-...

There are likely many more wolf attacks than ever known, because the wolves will take away their pray and devour almost all of it rather quickly. What's left will be scavenged within a day or so by vultures / what have you. Further, we used to regularly hunt wolves and keep dogs (Wolfhounds). As they make more human contact, they'll definitely be a lot more deaths.

That said, I think it's good / healthy to keep them around, but it's often not just the sheep that farmers are concerned about.

[qayxc]

> but it's often not just the sheep that farmers are concerned about.

Often you say? The sources you pulled up, cite 150 year old horror stories (i.e. the height of wolf panic that led to their extinction in most of Europe) from sparsely populated areas. The event in Russia is tragic, but as one of your sources points out, the vast majority of attacks are from rabid animals. Rabies is largely extinct in Europe, maybe not so much in Dagestan?

The point is that outside of sparsely populated mountain regions, hardly anyone has to be fearful of the big bad wolf. <3000 deadly encounters in the past 300 years, most of them (>80%) due to rabies. Statistically the opposite of often.

[EdwardDiego]

Why don't they get dogs to guard the herds then? And seriously, you're claiming that there's going to be wolves attacking people?

...do you know how modern wildlife management works? If wolves are reduced to hunting humans, it's because of a massive imbalance between predator and prey numbers, for whatever reason. Any half-decent forest service / whoever has rangers in your country, will be monitoring that balance, and stepping in to prevent a) animal suffering and b) potential risks to humans