Aggressioni lupo-uomo

[Antonio]

Premetto che sto cercando verifiche e particolari.
Domenica scorsa, mattino presto, un uomo con il suo cane nei boschi dei monti prenestini.
Il cane si allontana per poi ritornare poco dopo impaurito fra le gambe del padrone, inseguito da una coppia di lupi che non vedono subito l'uomo, posizionato dietro un albero.
Per allontanarli l'uomo mena qualche bastonata e urla impaurito, riuscendo comunque nell'intento. Chiaramente non si tratta di un aggressione verso l'uomo, ma forse verso il cane.
Aldilà di questo episodio e di altri segnalati anche nel forum, credo che le considerazioni sull'interazione uomo-lupo, nella nuova situazione italiana (colonizzazione di aree periurbane, densità della popolazione, frequentazione da parte dell'uomo delle aree vocate, etc.), debbano essere aperte e senza pregiudizi, in alcun senso.

[Duccio]

Situazioni di cani da caccia attaccati dai lupi (e uccisi) ne abbiamo documentate diverse. In molti casi il lupo, o i lupi, durante lo scontro con i cani si avvicinano al proprietario e non mostrano paura, ma questo è probabilmente da legare proprio alla colluttazione in atto. In ogni caso sarebbe sempre interessante raccogliere personalmente la testimonianza, meglio se "a freddo".

ciao, d

[pigrofalco]

Ripropongo la notizia già data da Duccio con approfondimenti e news

Insegnante uccisa da lupi in alaska

"March 13, 2010,

Hunters were combing the snowy brush around Chignik Lake, Alaska, on Friday in an attempt to hunt down up to four wolves that killed a 32-year-old special education teacher in the first known fatal wolf attack in the U.S. in modern times.

But the wolves were elusive, and villagers were hoping that state game officials would send in a helicopter to help track the animals, Village Council President Johnny Lind said.

"They've been looking and scouting around, and the wolves are definitely still around, but they're smart, and they take off before you can get close to them," Lind said.

Candice Berner, a special education teacher who traveled among several rural schools on the Alaska Peninsula, 475 miles southwest of Anchorage, was attacked while jogging and listening to her iPod Monday evening on the deserted, 3-mile-long road that leads out from the village to its small airstrip.

A native of Slippery Rock, Pa., she had been working in Alaska only since August. Her body was found by snowmobilers a short time after the attack. It had been dragged off the road and partially eaten, and was surrounded by wolf prints.

"Our investigation points to wolves being the most likely culprit. It is the only predatory animal that is active in the area that we're aware of, and we also believe the wolves have been increasingly threatening to people in the area," said Megan Peters, spokeswoman for the Alaska State Troopers. "They've been getting too close, circling, making people fearful for their safety."

Christi Aleck, another resident of the village, said that while there are always wolves in the area, three to four have been lingering unusually close over the past week or so and have been sighted again since the attack.

"They come in at nighttime, not very far from the village, and they're just kind of watching," she said. "They're waiting for somebody else to go out again, I guess."

She said villagers are driving their children to school and keeping them indoors during recess.

"People are scared. Oh yeah, they're scared," she said. "Nobody's walking around anywhere. I mean, wolves have always hung around in the wintertime, but they've never attacked anyone."

The only known previous fatal wolf attack in North America over the last 100 years occurred in 2005, when a young geology student was attacked and partially eaten by a pack of wolves in northern Saskatchewan.

In at least two other cases, there were attacks -- in Alaska and again in Saskatchewan -- that were halted by rescuers before they became fatal.

"What the research shows is that in the last 10 or 20 years, as wolves have kind of re-colonized areas where they were extirpated around the turn of the 20th century, and as people have also developed more habits of going out into national parks and wilderness areas, we've had more aggressive encounters," said Mark McNay, a retired Alaskan wildlife biologist who has studied wolf attacks.

Wildlife attacks in Alaska are relatively common. "Certainly we have bear maulings, we have people bitten by wolves, we have people that are stomped by moose," Peters said. "Having an incident where a human and animal cross paths and it doesn't end well, that's normal. But we don't have any other case on hand that we're aware of where someone was actually killed by a wolf."

Peters said state troopers had ruled out the possibility that Berner had died from any other cause and was later dragged away by wolves."


I due lupi uccisi in seguito al fatto non risultano affetti da rabbia

[Duccio]

Ricevo e pubblico....

If you are still interested in the recent "wolf attacks" in Georgia I would
like to share the little new information I could get and also briefly report
about the current situation in Georgia in respect of human-wolf relations
and also clarify some of the earlier information you might have received.

The media interest to the last incident that took place in the village of
Tsnori, Kekheti region, east Georgia last month died out fairly quickly and
as always there has been no follow up to confirm or deny the information
they (the media) had given to the public. There are two main reasons to
that: (1) the incident was really a minor one; the victim of the carnivore
attack got away with minor injuries like few scratches on the arm, (2) the
national media is absolutely not interested to report that sort of follow-up
information or say something like "there is no evidence of wolf
involvement, so it must have been a dog in fact". Ministry of the
Environment's local territorial office did not even initiate any special
investigation that would normally involve a wolf expert. According to the
preliminary information they collected, the incident took place right in the
middle of the village but and in the middle of the night. So no footprints
(on the pavement!) or other signs were obviously left behind by the
attacking animal and there were no witnesses except for the victim himself,
who happened to be extremely drunk as he very often does according to his
co-villagers. Hence it is very likely that the man was indeed attacked not
by a wolf but by a dog, stray or not stray, rabid or healthy. There is no
lack of street dogs in all Georgia and the big village of Tsnori is of
course no exception. In Georgian villages sometimes even pet dogs walk
around quite freely. Not all of them would have collars on them to tell
whether they are stray, homeless or somebody's pet. Also, some dogs really
do not like drunk people or maybe this is particularly true for street dogs.
For example, my own dog who was apparently born as a street dog and spent
his first 12 months or so in the street literary hates drunk strangers
(particularly men). Something in a drunk person's "extraordinary" behaviour
or the smell or something else simply drives him mad. The injuries the
Tsnori man got also did not look very "wolf-made". So it is very likely that
this last incident actually had nothing to do with wolves.

In any case the media did took it up as well as certain hunters groups who
are advocating wolf culling in Georgia. No one denies that we have a healthy
wolf population in this country. But the anti-wolf campaigners say we have
too many of them and demand their control and more over they demand that
government brings back the bounty system we used to have before 1990s and
which was abolished as a result of NACRES' long-term campaign against it. By
a very rough estimate the total wolf population in Georgia maybe between
1,000 - 2,000 individuals. As Georgian hunters have "successfully" reduced
some of wolf's primary prey species almost to zero (e.g. red deer) and other
species are also at densities a way below the habitats' carrying capacity,
it is only natural that there are many cases of wolf attacks on the
livestock. In addition wolves are now appearing in those parts of the
country in which local farmers have already lost the knowledge and habits
how to deal with them. So currently the pressure is increasing from the
local people, hence that from the local governments over to all of us within
the conservation community and more importantly over the central government.
Any incidents reported by the media as wolves attacking humans are of course
actively used by the anti-wolf campaigners. We at NACRES as well as other
conservationists in Georgia have long realised that something effective was
needed to be done to ease the situation and most importantly prevent
unpredictable and out-of-control situations. We have had cases in which
despite very clear legal restrictions the overactive local governors
organised or allowed totally indiscriminate wolf killing parties. At present
we have a special procedure of response to wolf or other large carnivore
attacks on livestock that may lead to legitimate and controlled removal of
the "guilty" wolf. The procedure and its enforcement still needs further
elaboration and many details are now emerging that need addressing.
According to the existing regulations and procedure if a wild carnivore
attacks or otherwise threatens people's lives or property they may be shot
but it has to be immediately reported to the authorities. Otherwise it may
be qualified as an illegitimate killing of a wild animal to which certain
sanctions may apply. This regulation and procedure has been repeatedly
abused and misinterpreted by the Georgian media and anti-wolf campaigners
who declare that wolves are so strictly protected that the law in fact
favours wolves to humans. In reality and in practice however if there are
wolf attacks local people can apply to the local authorities including the
local government and the local office of the Ministry of the Environment.
After certain procedures and review the Ministry will issue a special permit
for shooting certain number of wolves. By law only "guilty" wolves may be
shot but in reality this is quite difficult to implement or control. The
good thing is that the number of permits is usually 1 or 2, maximum 3-4 for
the whole district or province. Another good thing from the wolves' point
of view just as yet is that the local government is supposed to implement
the "wolf removal" under the supervision of the Environmental Ministry's
local office and the Environmental Inspection. And the local governments
very often have other priorities. The numbers as they stand at present are
as follows: Since 2008 the Ministry of the Environment and invited wolf
experts (all very trustful) have reviewed 22 applications from various local
governments and have issued permits to shoot 73 wolves (hence 3.3
individuals per affected district). And this is for the whole country.
According to the official data only 21 permits have so far been realised. In
certain places the hunters hired by the local governments to implement the
permits have attempted but were unable to actually kill a wolf. But the
local governments discontinued the project since local farmers stopped
reporting livestock losses; the wolves apparently left the area even if the
hunt was "not successful"(this may imply the importance of non-lethal
measures).

All the above was about the legal procedures and legitimate removal of
alleged livestock eating wolves. Even if they do manage to kill all 73
wolves on which the Government has agreed that is still only a
insignificant fraction of the total Georgian wolf population. Probably, this
would also be only a small percentage of the total number of wolves actually
killed illegally hence never reported or documented.

Sorry for the long email.
Best regards

Irakli Shavgulidze

[fiore955]

Mi pare di capire che in sostanza non ci sia niente di nuovo sotto al sole,a farne le spese sono sempre gli stessi,come avevo già avuto modo di considerare all'indomani della fatale aggressione.Inutile vestire di una parvenza di controllo istituzionale la pianificazione del"prelievo"tra l'altro eseguito ai danni di un poco probabile "lupo assassino",salvo poi non riuscire a controllare gli effettivi abbattimenti illegali che vi si sommano e che inevitabilmente ne conseguono sull'onda emotiva del solito allarmismo abnorme di coloro che vogliono cavalcarla.Interessante l'annotazione riguardante la probabile maggiore aggressività dei cani nei confronto degli ubriachi;in effetti anch'io ho potuto notare come verso determinate persone per così dire "sospette"aumenti la diffidenza dei miei cani,così come verso persone di colore,trasmettendo evidentemente ai loro acuti sensi percezioni di qualcosa di sconosciuto che lo porta ad adottare una strategia di tipo "difensivo".