If you are out in the woods and you come upon a roughly circular area of crushed down grass, that is a deer bed. Try and avoid walking through it, deer beds are full of ticks.
I’m pretty wary of ticks, when you go for hikes just do a body check after. Also, I tend to go with long pants (even in summer, I dislike bugs more than the sweat).
Plus a lightweight windbreaker can help to cover upper body. Plus it limits sun exposure which is also harmful.
Lethal dermal exposure is somewhere near 100mg/kg.
I probably wouldn’t wear permethrin treated pants and let a cat sit on my lap, but “anywhere near the clothes” is a pretty big exaggeration of the danger.
Some people don't like the scratchy feel of linen compared to cotton, although there are now linen-synthetic blends which ameliorate this almost entirely.
I have not come across linens that are scratchy. They can be coarse but not scratchy. Blends can be fine fibers. Coarse wool I do find scratchy, unless it’s cold then the scratchiness goes away. Seems like Belgian linen is good.
How is it really more complicated in the laundry? Most of my linen can do 60C washing cycle (”hot” I think it is called in USA) which is pretty much ”throw it in there with similar colours and forget about it” territory.
The wrinkles are a bit of the charm I think, might be easier to accept if you make it part of the fashion instead of fighting it.
Just a tip, most modern laundry detergents are formulated to handle washing with cold water to save you from having to use (expensive) hot water in a wash.
I have been washing for years now with tap cold water since learning that and it seems to work fine, even in winter.
I joked on Twitter 10-15 years ago that my dream use case for AR would be to easily identify wash temperature for my clothes as I prepare for laundry.
A friend replied with the news that cold would work for just about everything, and I haven’t used warm or hot water since then (maybe once with some really dirty jeans and towels). Such a great hack.
I mostly wash in 35C (expect underwear), so yes I do that. The high temp was to illustrate that linen is one of the easiest garments to wash because you never have to worry about accidentally throwing it into a batch of very dirty clothes and having it come out changed.
Yeah I’m a huge fan, lots of linen and thin, fine cotton that’s not been formaldehyde treated (so, not “non-iron”) on me in hot months. I even have an open-weave linen sweater that’s comfortable into the 90s of degrees F. I’ve got a few high-twist wool pieces that are nice in the heat, but they’re more specialized, less everyday wear sorta of things.
Dedicated summer clothes in trad fabrics are a ton less durable than their winter counterparts, though, for the simple reason that they’re much lighter-constructed. Individual pieces can be had plenty cheap if you bargain-hunt and shop used, but you cycle through more of them than, say, heavy-weight denim or a hefty tweed. Still, mine usually last a few years. Cycling them out seasonally means they don’t wear as fast as some synthetic-blend shirt you wear year-round, so you may not get more wears out of them, but they last a good long while in calendar time.
But man, do they breathe better than just about any of the fancy “tech” fabrics. And feel nicer. Durability, though, is an issue, and you have to get the fit closer to correct than many shoppers may be used to, because most of them won’t have much stretch (no cheating by blending in some nylon or whatever, like a “tech” fabric would)
Tell me your linen ironing tricks. I have a linen shirt that I dread wearing because of the effort that goes into getting it wrinkle free after every wash.
If I'm going off trail I cram my jeans into my boots and shake everything out before getting in the car. Ontario ticks are just a part of the experience now :/
> Twenty 50-m trail segments across two sites were randomly assigned to intervention groups: untreated woodchip borders, deltamethrin-treated woodchip borders, and ten assigned to untreated controls.
> Treated woodchips reduced I. scapularis adult and nymph density by 99 % (incidence rate ratio (IRR) = 0.01, 95 % CI: 0.001–0.08) relative to controls, while untreated woodchips achieved a 48 % reduction (IRR = 0.52, 95 % CI: 0.34–0.78).
Through a combination of two of my hobbies, I learned that pyrethroids are toxic to aquatic animals. Glad to see that they used "locations [that] were situated away from waterbodies".
Pyrethroids are very powerful tools for insect control (and non-toxic to humans) but any place where you have runoff or ground seepage is going to be a problem.
Aren't those places the ones most likely for ticks to thrive -- areas near bodies of water where animals like deer come to drink?
So hot take: this would only be useful in places where there are not a lot of ticks?
(PS: Permethrin-sprayed clothing is very effective.)
I got bitten by a mosquito in Ottawa a couple years ago that sent me to the hospital.. I stopped near the river while cycling to see a raccoon for few seconds, was more than enough for that lil sucker to do the job.
There are some potentially very nasty diseases spread by ticks and insects. For example, flaviviruses like West Nile, Dengue, and Powassan (which debilitated and ultimately killed the wife of Canadian fantasy author Charles de Lint.)
I got bitten by a tick at a cottage near Ottawa and got a fever then bell's palsy a month later. I didn't even notice I got bit at all at the time. A year later, I went to the hospital for a swollen knee and had surgery done, and ended up being tested positive for lyme disease. The doc says you're too young to have bell's palsy and arthritis. Careful out there!
Another worrying proxy for how deeply climate change is bleeding into everyday life: coffee prices, orange juice prices, and now having to engineer huge trail areas with woodchips just so people can avoid being bitten by exploding tick populations.
Ticks are a problem regardless. And they don’t like too much heat. So climate warming may even reduce their population in some parts. Or, more likely, move them up north. Giving relieve to some and headache to others…
Lyme disease vaccine would help a ton though. I’ve had Lyme 3 times by now. Thankfully encephalitis stab is a thing.
They don’t like heat? That seems incorrect. If true, Then why are they a huge problem in TX and other southerly areas, and are only now spreading north?
Different species I belive. Ticks in Texas are differnent from ticks in Ottowa. Most lyme disease in the US is concentrated in the northeast and northern great lakes states and into Canada (though it is spreading over the past few decades).
Texas has the 'Lone star Tick' primarily. But in Michigan for example we've had the Blacklegged tick (which is the main species known to carry Lyme in our state...) for a looong time.
They seem to be much less active on hot days compared to cooler days in my experience - though I can't say why. I've definitely observed a difference over the years though.
That said, whether it is hotter or cooler doesn't make much of a difference in terms of how you go about your day - you pretty much have to assume you can encounter them regardless.
It's the length and depth of cold days in the winter that can potentially limit their breeding populations, is my understanding. So the issue is that more northerly areas are getting much more variance in temperature and lacking long deep consistent cold periods.
Up and down cycles in temperature have always been a thing on the North American continent but climate change has made it even more variable. We will still get places where it gets very very cold but not for the consistent chunks of time it takes to set back tick populations significantly.
TLDR I don't think it's the heat or cold per se but the variance.
And yes climate change is absolutely the prime factor in their spread. Into places where they were not ever a threat before.
Ticks have always been around Ottawa, and even in 2011? I recall -40C for well over a week, and obviously cold temps around that week.
Insects lay eggs, and also go dormant under fallen leaves typically. The snow + leaves insulates them, it's how live insects survive the winter.
If you watch robins in the spring, before the ground thaws, you'll see them flipping over leaves. They're eating loads of insects hiding, most still torpid from the cold.
-40C isn't a problem for ticks to live through in this way.
In terms of population, everything follows predator/prey cycles. Nothing is static. It's normal for populations to "explode", eventually predators will grow in numbers too.
I see it with noseeums here, and dragonflies. There are almost no noseeums this year, but loads of dragonflies, which means the dragonfly population will collapse, and soon (couple of years) the noseemums will be relentless. But then the dragonflies will grow in numbers, with plentiful food, and the cycle will repeat.
It's natural.
Global warming may shift habitats, but these ticks are normally here. They're not new.
The lowest recorded temperature in Ottawa in the last 40 years was -33.1c in 1996. It hasn't been down to -40 since like 1911.
You might be recalling wind chill temperatures, which would not be relevant here. They're subjective perceived temperatures for hairless apes.
However it does occasionally get to (real) -40C ish in Edmonton area, and they now have populations of blacklegged ticks. But very small populations.
Like I said above, the issue is not the absolute lows or highs, it's durations of cold, which impact their ability to recover and produce large quantities of eggs in the spring. This was literally in an article I was reading about ticks the other day, don't make me hunt for it.
Black legged ticks are not new to Ontario, but they absolutely are to places like central Alberta. And the Lone Star tick is moving north for similar reasons and will be established here in Ontario shortly as well.
If there was more diversity in predators and prey, the population cycles would have smaller amplitudes. The large swings are often symptoms of a collapsing ecosystem.
I’ve seen a tick in Wisconsin every month of the year over the past five years or so. That is I’ve seen a January tick one year, February tick that same year or another year, etc. Whenever there is a bit of a warm spell they appear. Presumably small upward trends in temperature allows such warm spells to happen more frequently.
The black-legged tick season in Ottawa is March through June and again September through November. Summer (deerfly season) is just too hot for them and they go to ground.
We do all the best camping in January and February. Why, you might ask, when it's usually colder than -20 C? No ticks. Also no mosquitos, blackflies, or deerflies but mostly no ticks.
There has been a vaccine for dogs and cats for a while now, not sure why it hasn't been released for humans yet. Lyme can be really horrible. Some people we know have a 30-something son who was very active (camping, hiking, rock climbing, etc.) until he was bitten by a tick. Now he's quadriplegic.
Lots of drugs work for dogs and cats because they don't live longer than 25yrs. A human has 3-4x the lifespan during which side effects can be worse than the disease.
Is that true? I don't know of really any medicine that has side effects 25 years down the line. Would we even know? We don't test new meds that long before release.
Isn't it more because meds are cheaper to test on animals and liability is much lower?
When I asked why there is no human equivalent of flea/tick drops my vet said it was because "when you only live to be 20, you don't worry about smoking when you are 10."
Encephalitis is much more rare, but it's much worse than lyme. And there's a stab for it. Meanwhile Lyme is much more common, but much simplier to treat. Which is basically „take antibiotics or 3 to 21 days“ depending on how long it's been since the bite.
> The effects of vaccination on human behaviour presented yet another important uncertainty. Lyme vaccination, although it provides incomplete protection, may make individuals less likely to limit their exposure to ticks, which might actually increase their risk of Lyme and other tick-borne diseases (e.g. ehrlichiosis, babesiosis and Rocky Mountain spotted fever).
That was a very half-assed attempt. Hopefully a better one is coming soon.
Norway is projected to have growth in ticks and new tick species because of climate change (warmer and more humid climate), so that's one example of it moving north (though ticks seem to always have been in Norway?)
"Lymne" refers to an infection by the spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi, a bacteria closely related to syphillis. There are plenty of other tick-borne diseases (including localized staph infections at bite sites that can lead to necrotizing fasciitis)
Just like with syphillis, there is a cheap and simple cure that is more effective than any known vaccine. If it's caught in time. Prevention is even cheaper.
The standard treatment for Lyme also just happens to be the standard treatment for many of the other tick-borne diseases, so you're still better-off taking a course of doxycycline after a tick byte than getting a vaccination against Lyme.
I don't understand why we're not vaccinating deer populations, even if we're not vaccinating humans out of safety concerns, etc.
That and deer populations need to be significantly culled (along with rodents, the other part of the Lyme / deer tick population cycle).
In any case, lack of long consistent extended cold spells in the winter to set back their breeding population is the reason they've moving further north. Which is tied directly to climate change.
Ticks in my part of the world were never such a large problem. It was rare that you'd get one on your leg in the field behind our house, and now, you literally can't walk through the grass each year without having 10+ on your legs in a matter of minutes. Warmer and wetter weather and fewer hard winters. The presence of Lyme disease has also increased in them.
I have direct experience of this, so downvote all you want, climate change deniers.
In my whereabouts ticks were common 70+ years ago too. But nobody seemed to give a damn about them since disease-carrying ticks were not a problem. Talking to my grandma, it was common to have ticks in her youth. But now a massive chunk of them is lyme or encephalitis carrying. And suddenly it did become a problem ~ 20-30 years ago.
We have (had?) some ticks in our backyard and I came across these which I thought was a clever attack angle: tick tubes.
Permethrin-soaked cotton balls in a tube, mice find them and build nests out of the freely available cotton, ticks that the mice have gathered while walking around die when they come back to the nest.
It does work a little, but it's even more effective to just get some chickens. I did find permethrin works great on clothing - when I used to go hunting a lot I'd get ticks on me every time, and the thing is they climb off of your boots in the car and go under the seats or wherever so you don't get bitten until three days later when you're driving back from grocery shopping or whatever. After I started using permethrin and sprayed the floor of my car with it I never saw another tick again.
This seems like a good way to encourage ticks to develop a permethrin resistance because the cotton will stay in the rodents nest and gradually be reduced in concentration.
Ive been treating my car, hiking clothing and gear with permethrin and haven't had a tick since doing that. Reapply every time you go to the woods or every two weeks if you're in the woods continuously and keep the concentration up.
If my house was in the woods I would also treat the den/mud room.
If you have a rodent problem then control the rodents: manage habitat, trap/kill them, encourage predators like hawks etc.
No ticks at the altitude I reside. But with global warming it's slowly creeping up towards the towns further down. Same with Spanish slugs. Will soon be able to thrive here as well.
It still gets cold in the winter (negative 15-20 degrees F) where I am, and even though we had a relatively mild winter, ticks are about the same.
There's a tendency today to attribute everything to climate change, but it should be backed by actual data. It's a sort of attribution bias that to me just feels lazy.
There could be a lot of reasons why ticks might spread. I have lived here 10 years, and haven't noticed an increase or decrease in ticks year over year. Just my anecdata.
> explanations should be backed by data, it's lazy otherwise
> I personally haven't noticed an increase
The relationship between temperature, wetness/humidity, and tick range is extremely well-understood. Altitude is not a relevant variable compared to and controlling for temperature and humidity.
We know under what conditions different tick specie thrive versus die, and we know that as the years go on, there are far more areas under "tick-thriving" conditions for far longer periods, at least for the disease-carrying tick specie that we tend to care about.
No one mentioned anything about climate change except you, reflexively and defensively, for some odd reason.
It's a fact, though. You got too hung up on altitude, which I guess is just a proxy for temperature when I compare to neighboring towns. Been mentioned on the news etc that more and more towns get disease bearing ticks here, due to conditions for them getting better with global warming. Not sure why hearing a negative effect from global warming triggered you so?
I merely attempted to point out nuance, that mono-causal explanations are lazy and perhaps ignore other factors that might go into the increase of ticks. Ecosystems change for all kinds of reasons, climate change among them.
I didn't make any claims that temperature or moisture doesn't affect tick populations, but maybe there are some other factors at play. For instance, lack of predators for ruminants and rodents, also perhaps human caused, but unrelated to climate.
This thread proves one again that nuance is lost on the internet.
A hungry tick is much more likely to make your life miserable because you’re significantly more likely to encounter one in ecosystems with both species.
Given the utter paucity of wolf attacks on humans (vastly, incomprehensibly lower than the rates of Lyme disease), this is a deeply silly thing to worry about.
It’s really clear, sometimes, who hasn’t seen a place that isn’t paved.
This feels like a generalisable cognitive bug with our species.
"Kill all the wolves, die as a result from invisible bacteria carried by tiny arthropods - or from Type 2 diabetic heart failure, as getting out for a hike and staying safe is now too much hassle".
So I don't necessarily disagree with you but people way more rugged than we are and who didn't even knew what a paved road was decided to get rid of wolves a long time ago.
Moreover, what I observed is that urban professional class populations are usually way more in favor of wolves reintroduction than rural working class population.
> Moreover, what I observed is that urban professional class populations are usually way more in favor of wolves reintroduction than rural working class population.
Perhaps their reasons is an economic one (wolf attacks on livestock) and not an human safety one ?
It is definitely an economic one. I occasionally help on a sheep farm which has not been attacked. But colleagues on farms in neighbouring counties have had sheep killed by local wolves. Even if they publicly claim they they lost a lot of money and work (which is true) they also say also fear for their safety. However, in private they are not worried, they know the wolves will flee as soon as a human appears.
Well because they would risk losing a handful of sheep occasionally (which the government would likely pay for anyway). Also the prevalence of general cultural hatred of natural habitats and ecosystems prevalent amongst some sections of rural populations.
> was decided to get rid of wolves a long time ago.
Outside of islands like Britain that only really happened in the 1800s after wolves stopped being a threat anyway. Also interestingly enough in quite a few places in Western Europe more area was deforested and exploited for agriculture between the medieval period and the 20th century than now. That naturally made cohabiting with wolves and bears a bit problematic (now there are way more forests and protected areas, of course this only really applies to Europe not North America)
The deer trails are a lot harder to avoid.
I’m pretty wary of ticks, when you go for hikes just do a body check after. Also, I tend to go with long pants (even in summer, I dislike bugs more than the sweat).
Plus a lightweight windbreaker can help to cover upper body. Plus it limits sun exposure which is also harmful.
I probably wouldn’t wear permethrin treated pants and let a cat sit on my lap, but “anywhere near the clothes” is a pretty big exaggeration of the danger.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10822630/
The wrinkles are a bit of the charm I think, might be easier to accept if you make it part of the fashion instead of fighting it.
I have been washing for years now with tap cold water since learning that and it seems to work fine, even in winter.
A friend replied with the news that cold would work for just about everything, and I haven’t used warm or hot water since then (maybe once with some really dirty jeans and towels). Such a great hack.
Dedicated summer clothes in trad fabrics are a ton less durable than their winter counterparts, though, for the simple reason that they’re much lighter-constructed. Individual pieces can be had plenty cheap if you bargain-hunt and shop used, but you cycle through more of them than, say, heavy-weight denim or a hefty tweed. Still, mine usually last a few years. Cycling them out seasonally means they don’t wear as fast as some synthetic-blend shirt you wear year-round, so you may not get more wears out of them, but they last a good long while in calendar time.
But man, do they breathe better than just about any of the fancy “tech” fabrics. And feel nicer. Durability, though, is an issue, and you have to get the fit closer to correct than many shoppers may be used to, because most of them won’t have much stretch (no cheating by blending in some nylon or whatever, like a “tech” fabric would)
> Treated woodchips reduced I. scapularis adult and nymph density by 99 % (incidence rate ratio (IRR) = 0.01, 95 % CI: 0.001–0.08) relative to controls, while untreated woodchips achieved a 48 % reduction (IRR = 0.52, 95 % CI: 0.34–0.78).
So hot take: this would only be useful in places where there are not a lot of ticks?
(PS: Permethrin-sprayed clothing is very effective.)
Proximity to water doesn't seem to factor much either. Where I live, ticks this year are horrendous and everywhere.
Lyme disease vaccine would help a ton though. I’ve had Lyme 3 times by now. Thankfully encephalitis stab is a thing.
https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/data-research/facts-stats/lyme-dise...
Texas has the 'Lone star Tick' primarily. But in Michigan for example we've had the Blacklegged tick (which is the main species known to carry Lyme in our state...) for a looong time.
That said, whether it is hotter or cooler doesn't make much of a difference in terms of how you go about your day - you pretty much have to assume you can encounter them regardless.
Up and down cycles in temperature have always been a thing on the North American continent but climate change has made it even more variable. We will still get places where it gets very very cold but not for the consistent chunks of time it takes to set back tick populations significantly.
TLDR I don't think it's the heat or cold per se but the variance.
And yes climate change is absolutely the prime factor in their spread. Into places where they were not ever a threat before.
It impacts the population, but even a couple solid weeks of -20C weather doesn't seem to be enough to eradicate them.
Insects lay eggs, and also go dormant under fallen leaves typically. The snow + leaves insulates them, it's how live insects survive the winter.
If you watch robins in the spring, before the ground thaws, you'll see them flipping over leaves. They're eating loads of insects hiding, most still torpid from the cold.
-40C isn't a problem for ticks to live through in this way.
In terms of population, everything follows predator/prey cycles. Nothing is static. It's normal for populations to "explode", eventually predators will grow in numbers too.
I see it with noseeums here, and dragonflies. There are almost no noseeums this year, but loads of dragonflies, which means the dragonfly population will collapse, and soon (couple of years) the noseemums will be relentless. But then the dragonflies will grow in numbers, with plentiful food, and the cycle will repeat.
It's natural.
Global warming may shift habitats, but these ticks are normally here. They're not new.
You might be recalling wind chill temperatures, which would not be relevant here. They're subjective perceived temperatures for hairless apes.
However it does occasionally get to (real) -40C ish in Edmonton area, and they now have populations of blacklegged ticks. But very small populations.
Like I said above, the issue is not the absolute lows or highs, it's durations of cold, which impact their ability to recover and produce large quantities of eggs in the spring. This was literally in an article I was reading about ticks the other day, don't make me hunt for it.
Black legged ticks are not new to Ontario, but they absolutely are to places like central Alberta. And the Lone Star tick is moving north for similar reasons and will be established here in Ontario shortly as well.
We do all the best camping in January and February. Why, you might ask, when it's usually colder than -20 C? No ticks. Also no mosquitos, blackflies, or deerflies but mostly no ticks.
Isn't it more because meds are cheaper to test on animals and liability is much lower?
But prions were the cause, and those are slow acting.
The new, safer vaccine is only recommended if you're going to Japan or surrounding areas, and planning to going outside the city.
Humans generally aren't vaccinated for Rabies either, unless you are e.g. a veterinarian who might have a higher chance of exposure to it.
This is key paragraph from the link:
> The effects of vaccination on human behaviour presented yet another important uncertainty. Lyme vaccination, although it provides incomplete protection, may make individuals less likely to limit their exposure to ticks, which might actually increase their risk of Lyme and other tick-borne diseases (e.g. ehrlichiosis, babesiosis and Rocky Mountain spotted fever).
That was a very half-assed attempt. Hopefully a better one is coming soon.
I assume a vaccine would try to be multivalent.
Just like with syphillis, there is a cheap and simple cure that is more effective than any known vaccine. If it's caught in time. Prevention is even cheaper.
The standard treatment for Lyme also just happens to be the standard treatment for many of the other tick-borne diseases, so you're still better-off taking a course of doxycycline after a tick byte than getting a vaccination against Lyme.
There are also common coinfections which are grouped under the same name, despite being unique.
That and deer populations need to be significantly culled (along with rodents, the other part of the Lyme / deer tick population cycle).
In any case, lack of long consistent extended cold spells in the winter to set back their breeding population is the reason they've moving further north. Which is tied directly to climate change.
That and deer populations need to be significantly culled (along with rodents, the other part of the Lyme / deer tick population cycle)."
Yep, we should extend the deer hunting seasons so we can vaccinate 'em with lead (I'll leave the rat hunting to others).
Ticks in my part of the world were never such a large problem. It was rare that you'd get one on your leg in the field behind our house, and now, you literally can't walk through the grass each year without having 10+ on your legs in a matter of minutes. Warmer and wetter weather and fewer hard winters. The presence of Lyme disease has also increased in them.
I have direct experience of this, so downvote all you want, climate change deniers.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NGv6RASFsY4&t=26s
Permethrin-soaked cotton balls in a tube, mice find them and build nests out of the freely available cotton, ticks that the mice have gathered while walking around die when they come back to the nest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permethrin - see other animals, I can never get anchor links to copy on mobile.
Ive been treating my car, hiking clothing and gear with permethrin and haven't had a tick since doing that. Reapply every time you go to the woods or every two weeks if you're in the woods continuously and keep the concentration up.
If my house was in the woods I would also treat the den/mud room.
If you have a rodent problem then control the rodents: manage habitat, trap/kill them, encourage predators like hawks etc.
There's a tendency today to attribute everything to climate change, but it should be backed by actual data. It's a sort of attribution bias that to me just feels lazy.
There could be a lot of reasons why ticks might spread. I have lived here 10 years, and haven't noticed an increase or decrease in ticks year over year. Just my anecdata.
> explanations should be backed by data, it's lazy otherwise
> I personally haven't noticed an increase
The relationship between temperature, wetness/humidity, and tick range is extremely well-understood. Altitude is not a relevant variable compared to and controlling for temperature and humidity.
We know under what conditions different tick specie thrive versus die, and we know that as the years go on, there are far more areas under "tick-thriving" conditions for far longer periods, at least for the disease-carrying tick specie that we tend to care about.
No one mentioned anything about climate change except you, reflexively and defensively, for some odd reason.
> No ticks at the altitude I reside. But with global warming it's slowly creeping up towards the towns further down.
I wasn't making any causal claims such as this ^
I merely attempted to point out nuance, that mono-causal explanations are lazy and perhaps ignore other factors that might go into the increase of ticks. Ecosystems change for all kinds of reasons, climate change among them.
I didn't make any claims that temperature or moisture doesn't affect tick populations, but maybe there are some other factors at play. For instance, lack of predators for ruminants and rodents, also perhaps human caused, but unrelated to climate.
This thread proves one again that nuance is lost on the internet.
It’s really clear, sometimes, who hasn’t seen a place that isn’t paved.
"Kill all the wolves, die as a result from invisible bacteria carried by tiny arthropods - or from Type 2 diabetic heart failure, as getting out for a hike and staying safe is now too much hassle".
Moreover, what I observed is that urban professional class populations are usually way more in favor of wolves reintroduction than rural working class population.
Perhaps their reasons is an economic one (wolf attacks on livestock) and not an human safety one ?
> was decided to get rid of wolves a long time ago.
Outside of islands like Britain that only really happened in the 1800s after wolves stopped being a threat anyway. Also interestingly enough in quite a few places in Western Europe more area was deforested and exploited for agriculture between the medieval period and the 20th century than now. That naturally made cohabiting with wolves and bears a bit problematic (now there are way more forests and protected areas, of course this only really applies to Europe not North America)