Wolves Killing People
7. Conclusions
Rarity
The Linnell and McNay reports show that wolf attacks on people are vary rare. The records they examined indicate that wolves have wounded and killed several hundreds of people, but given these attacks were over a period of centuries and throughout the northern hemisphere, wolf attacks are sparse and meagre. Only 17 cases of people killed by wolves were found in the last 50 or so years in the whole of North America, Europe and Russia - 50 people in a human population of roughly a billion people.
A revealing point which shows just how rare wolf attacks are is that they can be listed in a single document (like the Linnell Report and the McNay Report) and when attacks occur in the West the worse cases are sufficiently newsworthy for broadcast in the news media.
Wolf Tolerance
Wolves can live close to people without causing problems. Their tolerance is surprising, even when people harm their cubs or take their kills. This is not to say that a healthy (that is non-rabid) wolf will never kill anyone. Sooner or later this may happen. But wolves are large wild predators and humans are ubiquitous worldwide. We should therefore expect the occasional unfavourable wolf-human encounter and not be overly shocked when it happens.
Predisposing Factors
Factors predisposing wolves to attack people, and apparently accounting for the majority of wolf attacks on people, are rabies, environment degradation, habituation, and provocation.
Whereas rabies is less widespread than formerly and environments for wolves are improving, except in Third World countries, habituation and provocation remain a problem. Habituated wolves do not inevitably attack people. But now and then circumstances conspire to combine the conditions which can prompt a tragic incident. The solution is to keep wolves wild and afraid of people, so that they keep their distance, and for people to keep their distance from wolves.
At least some wolf attacks on people are a consequence of our own actions. We must be careful, therefore, to examine our own behaviour and not just the wolf's.
Perception Of The Wolf
Many animals around us which we take for granted, like horses and dogs, have killed more people than wolves. So there seems little point being afraid of wolves. Yet many people are afraid of wolves. The wolf was the most common and ubiquitous large predator in Europe. Wolf attacks were sometimes fatal and now and then dramatic. They left a deep impression on the imagination of people in a pre-literate Europe where wolves and nature were dark and misunderstood. This old perception of the wolf may take some time to expire.
© Wolf Trust 2004. All rights reserved.