Very much. In Portugal, where I know their bad behavior from, it's almost impossible to keep a garden unless you have excellent fencing and ideally a loud dog to let you know when they are on your land (not that you want them to actually meet, that would be dangerous).

Yes, very much so here in and around Berlin. No garden is safe, and neither is your trash unless you lock it in somewhere. They no longer mind human presence at all, which was not the case 20 years ago (they used to be very shy), and they have become really smart, too, and have opened or unhinged our fence gate several times.

in Italy they're a significant issue due to foreign species having been introduced years ago. The new species reproduce faster than they are killed by hunters or predators.

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We can get Colossal Biosciences on the case. They can add the European Lion to their list after the Woolly Mammoth.

Herodotus in most cases reported what he had been told by others and he himself frequently expressed doubts about whether that was true or not.

In several cases where for a long time it was thought that some statements of Herodotus were false more recent research has shown that they were actually true. In some cases some statements of Herodotus seemed false due to mistranslations, e.g. where it was thought that he described some kind of giant ants, but those were in fact marmots (i.e. rodents) of normal size.

So I do not think that he deserves to be called "father of lies".

Many more recent historians have been much more biased politically, so one must read their works very carefully to distinguish facts from propaganda.

This is especially true for many very recent historians of the 20th and 21st century, many of whom deserve to be called liars much, much more than Herodotus and even than the most biased historians from the Antiquity.

Dutch version of the WUR page says basically the same thing: "Uit het onderzoeksrapport blijkt dat Nederland juridisch gezien een bijdrage aan de wolvenpopulatie moet leveren van 23 tot 56 roedels. " -> the study concludes that the Netherlands has to contribute to the wolf population from 23 to 56 wolf packs.

Reading further:

https://edepot.wur.nl/690748

It seems that this is part of a european "habitats directive" for managing biodiversity within Europe. This directive (according to the above paper) determined there need to be around 500 wolf packs across Europe to keep wolves at a stable level without too much inbreeding. The Netherlands was found to be able to "contribute" 23 to 56 wolf packs in this sense.

If those were wild sheep, and the wolves came there on their own like the other comments said, isn't that just nature working as intended?

If those were private sheep, shouldn't they be better guarded?

Shame they can't swim, it would be good to see them reintroduced to the UK.

you have to go back more than 100 years, but fair.

In those 100 years the rest of the environment changed, it's a bit of an experiment right to reintroduce it without having contingency plan if things go wrong, because shooting them if they are too aggressive is not allowed, unless they're marked as 'problem wolf'.

Speaking as a non urban northern Australian .. I'm guessing that's very much a European "we"?

Here we're still surrounded by wild ecosystems and unaligned others: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HA3SuHtCWo0

I'm probably bad at counting, but what is the 3rd body?

Thank you for the ad hominems btw.

Its not morals, it cost.

Sheep are a cash animal, and wolves taking them cost money.

sorry but I think you are not considering history and data here... sheep and goats were selectively bred by humans and often cannot survive without us. Modern (domestic) sheep and goats are veeeery different from their wild ancestors (e.g. traits vital for wild survival got removed). The idea that "they survived history, they will survive forever" is a classic logical fallacy. Many species survived for millions of years right up until rapid environmental shifts/new pressures drove them to extinction (e.g. see the pyrenean ibex). Moreso: modern habitats have little resemblance to historical ones. Wild deer/goats/sheeps evolved in vast, connected ecosystems! With human development (highways/agricultural fencing/climate change) today we have severely fragmented habitats: natural migration routes are no longer there. So a lot of these "survived thorughtout history" animals can get easily squared / hunted down

Population control, preventing overgrazing, stuff like that. However, the Netherlands (unlike most countries) is basically a big farm with practically no wild nature, so humans manage that stuff already. Maybe I'm exaggerating a tad, but I don't get what benefit wolves have in the Netherlands specifically.

Its larger animal control.

Wildboars can be quite destructive, as are deers. the wolve was the natural preditor of those animals so the only thing that kept them in check was either hunting, disease or food availability.

In the UK deer over population is a problem for forestry as they eat saplings. So we spend a lot of cash hunting them (good food source, but not widely distributed in shops) Wolves stop that.

For the netherlands sspecifically, where there are deer they eat the trees that provide bank stability (ie willows) Less of a problem now but they also eat the pioneer species that were used to build polders.

Deer carry disease for cattle and sheep as well. although cows in holland are fairly hemmed in, ticks and fleas are less so.

I'm not sure the wolves actually want to live with those people either but no one is suggesting to eradicate those people.

Honestly wolves work with smell and will actively avoid humans. Opposite to domesticated dogs which at the sight of a human will bark at a human and oftentimes attack. Having lived in multiple regions in Europe with statistical presence of wolves I have zero encounters with wolves and dozens of occurrences where domesticated dog was barking at me or chasing me.

Maybe they're saying that there are better ways to coexist with animals that were here before us, before we razed their forests, than, you know, genocide

Is a nice slogan but a hollowed one also

There are thousands of millions of people that live with wolves in their houses. And they massively love the experience and claim that it improves their lives. Wolves and dogs are the same species. This means also that wolves are the animal that saved more human lives, by a mile, after humans.

----- but you referred to the wild big bad wolf... Okay

Wolves are shy and don't attack humans if they can avoid it

Registered wolves attacks on people in the last 100 years are not zero. Wolves are the only wild terrestrial animal in the Western countries that would deliberately help, adopt and feed a lost children in distress, so is a negative value and should be expressed as "X people saved by wolves this decade.

Wolves save lives in other ways also. Drivers will see their risk to die in a car crash against a wild boar, a dog or a deer drastically reduced. See "ecology of fear".

And they chase off feral dogs that in fact do attack humans each year.

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Wolves protect cattle and people from disease

Not catching Lyme disease is a good thing

Dutch parents will appreciate also that the cheese and milk that his children consume is free from bovine tuberculosis.

Netherlands is free from the disease but in can reenter at any time. In 2026 four people in the Netherlands suffered the disease.

Farmers fear bovine tuberculosis. One positive means your farm being quarantined and forbidden to sell dairy or meat for an indefinite time. Often having to sacrifice and dump every one of your cows. The air transmission from animal to human is also possible and the disease is not easy to detect in their first stages.

The return of the wolves to Netherlands adds a new layer of protection. They will take good care of assuring that the wildlife does not get the disease.

And before you reply with: "but distemper", rabies is a problem technically solved long time ago in developed countries. Meat baits and an helicopter will grant you that every fox, ferret and wolf in the area will get its vaccine. Poland and Austria do this since 80's with stellar results.

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Wolves benefit hunters

A well documented effect of wolves on the populations of their preys is a drastic improvement in the size and quality of deer trophies by genetic selection when wolves appear. Hunters find desirable having bigger and healthier deer, so wolves provide a valuable service.

"But wolves in my area will ate 150 deer this year!", yep they will do.

Lets imagine that I offer you to choose between two options. I will offer you 10000 dollars, but you can keep the first 150, and then we will trow a dice with a 1% of probability of earning the other 9850 dollars.

Or I will give you "only 9850 dollars" and you'll lose this nice 150 bucks forever.

What option would you choose?

Hunters choose the same. Each time wolves had been extirpated from an area, soon epidemics appeared to decimate the deer population and killing, not hundreds, thousands or tens thousands of deer. It happened in Spain on 2022. It happens all the time.

Also if you think that removing the wolves will stop the attacks to cattle, think again. Is guaranteed, and has been proven several times, that it will increase the attacks.

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Alive wolves may be a touristic resource.

Since 1970 wolf reintroduction, places around Yellowstone started to notice millions of dollars extra each year, because wolves are the only big carnivore in the area that uses the day to frolic in open spaces all around the year (bears sleep for months and cougars are elusive and nocturnal). Tourists love to watch wolves from a safe distance, and travel from far away to see them. Wolves are a touristic magnet.

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Wolves will benefit the huge sector of agriculture and ornamental plants in Holland.

Tulip breeders will have less bulbs unearthed by wild boards. They should be happy about that.

Farmers will have fewer damages in their vegetable or cereal crops, and insurance companies will pay less by those.

Is the damage done on cattle more than the money earned or saved by all the other wolf services?

I doubt it, but farmers can pay anytime they want to remove bovine tuberculosis, screwworms, etc, etc, from each deer and wild boar in the country. If they create the problem by not allowing wolves in the place, maybe they should fix it with their own time and money instead to tax other for that.

I never found a politician that will frown upon the idea of saving taxes in disease cleaning campaigns or forest restoration, because wolves to this for free and those taxes can be used now in other things.

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I assure you that a lot of the people that live with wolves don't have any problem with being safer, richer and healthier

That’s not true. Wolves are incredibly smart animals and will find and exploit weak points in otherwise expensive fencing systems. They also jump surprisingly high. Moreover, once they manage to cross a fence they do not kill to feed. Instead, they slaughter entire herds of sheep for the sport of it. I personally think wolves are incredible animals, but their sudden reintroduction in the Netherlands feels ill thought out.

Hmm. Well, not sure about this. If you put yourself in the shoes of the wolf, sheep are abundant, free, delicious everything- their "economy" is exclusively food-bound. Not sure what kind of fences would keep them out, and how expensive would they be- and how long they would last.

Well I guess we differ there then, I do like not having to carry a rifle or sprays when i walk outside (we are not allowed). I also like livestock and kids not having to fear a predator that we drove to the outskirts.

I do wonder where you live in the Netherlands and if you just find it convenient to talk about the rural parts without having to face the consequences.

"safe and boring holiday park" sounds like a sentence for a country.

Oh don't get me wrong, I like the EU for many things, but course correcting is not its strong suit.