How to Protect Endangered Wild Wolves

Although England no longer has wild wolves, they are an important endangered species abroad, and there are many rewilding projects, which helps to keep ecosystems in balance.

Fourteen Wolves is the true story of how wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park, as the ecosystem began to collapse. Before their reintroduction, elk swarmed the plains, bears starved, rabbit families shrink and birds flew to new homes. Plants vanished, trees withered and rivers disappeared.

In 1995, wild wolves were returned to the park, and the balance of nature has returned.

Yet over the border in Canada, millions of dollars are spent shooting wolves from the sky, and the previous Trump government removed the protection of wolves, despite experts saying that the way to protect cattle is simply by using sheds for birthing calves, and removing dead carcasses.

Wolves are natural predators of elk, and hunting wipes out nearly all of them in Yellowstone (and led to an over-population of elk) until the rewilding project.

It’s sad, but nature. Wolves are not vegetarians, and just as lions eat deer, wolves eat elk, and this is far better than having humans getting evolved, and messing everything up. Just so hunters can stick heads of dead wolves on their walls.

Rewilding also has a knock-on effect on the environment. When you have over-populations of elk standing in the same spots eating trees, this causes river banks to erode, and now there are still wild elk, but riverbanks are stronger with thick willows and trees, which also helps to stop flooding. This in turn improves life for local birds and fish.

The Ecological Role of Wolves

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Wolves keep prey in balance, just as our wild foxes (when they have not gone into cities due to lack of habitat) eat rabbits and rats in the countryside. This again is sad, but prevents over-population and also stops land being damaged from over-grazing.

And as sad as it is, it’s likely a lot quicker and more humane for a fox or wolf to quickly break the neck of a prey animal, than unskilled humans shooting them, often just for fun.

The leftovers from wolf attacks are left in the countryside, so birds and smaller mammals can eat them, rather than going onto roadside to eat roadkill, which then causes them to die, and can cause road accidents. Everything in nature works in balance, if left alone.

Peaceful Existence Between Wolves and Humans

Rather than just killing wolves, the answer is to educate communities and farmers, and promote peaceful co-existence:

Improved Livestock Management: Farmers can rotate grazing areas to reduce risk, keep animals in secure enclosures at night, and avoid letting livestock roam unattended in high-risk zones.
Non-Lethal Deterrents: Motion-activated lights, noise makers, and fence upgrades can scare wolves away from farms. These let wolves maintain territory, while protecting domestic animals.
WildEyes is a Swiss AI invention that detects approaching predators and sends alerts to farmers, to scare off wolves. The same technology is protecting rhinos and elephants from poachers.

The Wolf Watch Sanctuary (on the Shropshire/Welsh border) is a 100-acre woodland offering homes for wolves rescued from captivity (one pair was rescued from a Warwickshire zoo). It does not allow ‘watching wolves’ for money, instead it takes in displaced wolves to live akin to the wild.