Bring Back the Wolf - Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life - page 113

to possess a deep fear of wild animals, even those which can do us no
possible harm. This could be because this was one of the first nations
to become largely urbanized, or because much of the countryside is
controlled by that small but peculiarly powerful class, which often
seems to be antagonistic to any wildlife not classified as game. But it
is also clear that, partly perhaps because of the popularity of wildlife
programmes, enthusiasm for the idea of restoring our native wildlife
is growing - everywhere except among the few thousand people who
own most of the countryside. It is an unfortunate quirk of fate that
those likely to exert the most influence over the question of whether
or not our missing species are reintroduced are those who are most
resistant to the idea. But in the case I am about to discuss, it is not
only the landowners who are likely to voice strong objections.
The deadly ferocity of the wolf is a story to which we are exposed
early and often. It swallows grandmothers then borrows their clothes.
It dresses as a sheep or a sheep dog to pursue its wicked schemes. It
blows down houses. It hybridizes with people to spread havoc through
merely human society. Christianity equates wolves with evil and greed,
though they played a more positive role in the foundation myths of
some cultures, such as the Turkics, Chechens, Inuit and Romans.
To what extent are the horror stories true? Wolves have certainly
killed people. A comprehensive review of recorded wolf attacks from
1557 until the present found that unprovoked attacks by non-rabid
wolves are 'very rare', and that almost all of them took place prior to
the twentieth century. 52 Researchers found that eight people have
been injured by wolf attacks in Europe in the past twenty years, but
no one has been killed. There are nearly 20,000 wolves in Europe.
During the past fifty years, five people have been killed by rabid
wolves on the Continent and four by wolves without rabies, four by
each category in Russia (where there are 40,000 wolves) and none in
North America (where there are 60,000). Wolves not carrying rabies
are most likely to attack when they have lost their fear of humans and
live among them, or when they have been cornered or trapped.
There is no rabies in Britain,* and any wolves brought here for
* Except among bats, which tend not to spread it to any other form of wildlife. (Vam-
pire bats in South America are another matter: they spread rabies to other species,