Gray wolves, hitherto considered a threat to livestock, may actually be an asset to the environment in which they live
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves himGray wolves, hitherto considered a threat to livestock, may actually be an (economic) resource for the environment they live in: they frighten deer and reduce car accidents, according to a new study.
The environmentalist Rolf Peterson he remembers when, until not many years ago, he drove around the remote streets of the Upper Michigan peninsula and saw areas covered with deer carcasses. But the situation (thankfully) has changed since gray wolves arrived in the region from Canada and Minnesota.
When the wolves arrived (between the 90s and 2000s), the accidents between cars and deer decreased sharply - explains the researcher.
Gray wolves, among the first species to be included in the protection program ofEndangered Species Act (1973), were reintroduced in Yellowstone National Park in 1995. In other regions of the United States, however, the population of this species has naturally decreased: today there are just over 5.500 specimens in 48 states.
Read: In the US, gray wolves can be hunted or killed: after 45 years they are no longer a protected species
Recently, a team of scientists collected data concerning traffic accidents and wolf movements in Wisconsin, to determine the effect the arrival of wolves had had on the frequency of traffic accidents involving deer, and they discovered the existence. of a real 'landscape of fear'.
In a fairly short space of time, once wolves 'colonized' an area, traffic accidents involving deer dropped by 24%. - explains Dominic Parker, of the University of Wisconsin and author of the study. - Both the decrease in the deer population due to the hunting of wolves and the behavioral changes in the same caused by the presence of the new predators are to be considered factors for this decrease in accidents. The presence of a large predator in the area, in fact, influences the way the catch behaves. Wolves use linear traits of their environment, such as roads, pipelines, or riverbeds, for their passage, and deer learn to stay away from these places.
A resource that is also good for man, therefore, the presence of gray wolves. Hitherto despised by ranchers for threatening their livestock, their presence can instead help save money by indirectly reducing road accidents - an annual expense of tens of millions of dollars.
Most economic studies on the presence of wolves have given negative results, because they focus on losses in livestock - he says. Dave Mech of the US Geological Survey (Minnesota). - But wolves reshape ecosystems in many ways, often difficult to track economically.
A lesson for states like Idaho where they want to exterminate them.
Source: PNAS
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