198: Living with Wolves - The Complete Guide to Coexistence - Conservation and Science

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
So, folks, you know the drill.
This is Conservation and Science podcast, where we take a deep diveinto topics of ecology, conservation, and human wildlife interactions.
And I'm Tommy Serafinski and I always try to bring you diverseperspectives and diverse opinions on the topics that I cover.
And that means that sometimes you might disagreewith, views and opinions you hear on this podcast.

(00:21):
But that's okay, because we need more dialogand understanding and less division and fighting.
And today we continuing with a topicthat sparks particularly a lot of emotions
and may be divisive, divisive,and that is the coexistence with large carnivores.
And last week in the last episode, which is two weeks ago,we talked about living with Lynx.

(00:47):
And today we are going to talk specifically about wolves.
And our guest is the author of the book living with Wolves.
Here's a chapter is,
cover ecological anthropologist and field philosopher Thorsten Gieser.
Thorsten, welcome back to the show.

(01:07):
Yeah, thanks for having me once again.
I'm happy to be here and talk about the new topic.
That's a that's absolute pleasure.
And, folks, you might not know Thorsten was our guest in episode 195,
where we talked about environmental stewardship in and hunting

(01:29):
or whether hunting can or cannot, foster that environmental stewardship.
And at the time, we I think it was after we finished recording,we start talking about wolves and they said like,
hey, I have a book about wolvesliving with wolves, affects feelings and sentiments
in human wolf coexistence and Fox as usual, the link to the bookis in the description of the show, and you can get it there.

(01:56):
And if you get it there, through those links,you will support my work, because I will get it.
See commission from every sale.
So, Thorsten.
Wolves. And this is where it all started last time.
The wolves are very special.
So not maybe, in my opinion, ecologically, because, Well,

(02:18):
lynx bear, these are large carnivores that we deal with in the,in the European specifically context also North America.
And but wolves have a special place not only ecologically
but mythologically psychologically, emotionally in humans.

(02:38):
And I guess this is one of the things that you're dealing with.
Your book,you took the, approach and you're talking about affective dimensions.
Could you please lay it out to us like,what is this angle that you took in your book?
Because you spend a lot of timeexplaining your methodology in a book and so on.

(03:00):
Yeah.
So I call it the affective dimension of the human wolf relationship.
I could have perhaps opted for the more,the easier version of kind of understanding emotions in coexistence.
But the problem with emotions is when we think about emotions,we already have this psychological conception of emotion in our heads.

(03:26):
So we're seeing something, about emotionsas something that is kind of deeply inside of us as individuals.
And this is kind of it's, of course,kind of how we understand emotions usually.
But it's also, for me, coming from the humanities, it's only one sideof, of what emotions are about.
And there's actually so much more going on about emotions.

(03:50):
So it's not just about, something that goes on deep inside of usand as individuals, but, it's also something that is in between us.
Yeah, in between us as human beings.
So there's a social dimension to, to emotions and it's, something that happens in all our relationships,

(04:10):
even our relationship to landscape, to our own land, relationshipwith different kinds of animals.
So, so basically, it's it's
something that that kind of defines and emergesout of relationships, basically.
And it's also not just individualand not just between kind of two beings, but it's also something

(04:33):
that can take on another dimension when when there's somethingforming, like, what we would call a mood or an atmosphere.
Yeah.
So something that goes beyond us as individuals,
something that kind of is seeping through the landscapeand and so on, and giving everything a kind of emotional tone.

(04:54):
Yeah. It's just like when we go to a partyand we say, oh, that's a really good mood in here. Yeah.
So there's something happening,just not just inside people, but also amongst them.
Yeah. And and this is for me what, what it means kind of to coexist.
It's also sharing an emotional landscapein some way and of different kinds of emotion.

(05:17):
Interacting with each other, mixing with each other,sometimes contradicting each other, challenging each other.
So there's there's a whole lot of emotional dynamicsgoing on all around us.
Yeah. And this is what we need to consider actually,when we talk about coexistence.
Yeah.
It's not just this pragmatic questions of, how to protect herds.

(05:41):
Or how to maintain, certain population size of the practice,
or even about kind of all this cultural baggage that we havethat you mentioned in the beginning.
Yeah.
So there's so much more going on, which is a real dynamic.
And, by choosing this word affect,

(06:04):
it's it's a kind of a term that includes all these different dimensions.
And also, more importantly, when we talk about ethics, kind of in,
in the humanities and social sciences,we usually means something that affects us.
So it's a kind of a force. Something going on? Yeah.

(06:24):
So like you, you see a wolf and something in you response.
Yeah. So this is what it means to be fact. Yeah.
So you have a response so that this could be just kind ofa tingling of your hair getting goosebumps.
Yeah. It could, it could be kind of a feeling in your stomach.
Or it could be kind of that what we understandthen as a fully formed emotion, which is kind of we're fascinated

(06:52):
or we are perhaps a bit scared. Yeah.So this is what it means to be affected.
And this is the starting point where emotions begin to form and,and to develop, and to do something.
So that we have to respond to.
Yeah, there's many things because like what you're saidis people often say, talk about links, right?

(07:15):
It's always great to have links and knowing it's there,even though I will never see the links,
surely, because they're so secretive and so on.
So I guess this is what you're talking about, this emotional thing.
Just no, they are there and this is coming up, quite often.
Or like you said, ethical aspects.

(07:36):
You know, some people in Ireland arguethat bringing back wolves to Ireland would be
an act of decolonization, because that was Britishwho killed all the wolves and so on and so forth.
But I feel like
in case of wolves, that
is just to the detriment of the animal and of the relation,because I think that these effects, these emotion or landscapes

(08:05):
are making that coexistenceso much more difficult in terms of, of wolves.
Would you agree with that?
And why is that, that wolves are so special for us?
Well, I would say they're kind of two sides to that question.
The one side is, kind of the the effectsthat come from the wolves directly and from us interacting with wolves.

(08:33):
And the other side is what's going on between us humans within society,between different groups, between different stakeholders,
and what is so typical about wolves and less so about other animalslike lynx, is that, it's really mixed up these two levels.

(08:53):
Yeah.
And the problem that I addressed in my book that I identified is that inin the literature, we really separated out these two dimensions.
There.
And so we have kind of ecologists, we have natural scientistsworking on the real animal and everything to do with that.

(09:15):
And we have to social scientists, on the other hand,working with the so-called human.
Yeah.
And the, the, the presumption behindthat is basically that kind of the real wolves.
They don't matter for what's going on in our society.
Yeah. It's basically only what the wolf represents.

(09:35):
Yeah.
As in terms of symbolism of the stories or narratives that, that wewhat that we tell kind of the,
the cultural, context, and that all that can be separated from what wolves actually do.
But of course, everyone who knows wolvesand when I was coexistence knows that, you can't separate it out.

(09:58):
It's, it's a web of relationships. Yeah.
So in coexistence, we are all in there together.
Yeah, it's it's not like what you also mentioned inin your last conversation with John, your handsome.
It's not this old view that we have of that wild animals.
Somewhere else in wilderness that is separate from where humans dwell.

(10:20):
But actually coexistence means we are all in it together somehow. Yeah.
Where we're living, you call it living togetheror living alongside or living next to each other.
But basically, it's about relationships.
So we have to take both of these sides into account. Yeah.
And then of course, the there are some problems why wolves are specialand that the one is kind of from our historical baggage.

(10:50):
So with that,
that we just we have this centuries of continued.
I would even call it warfare with wolves.
So this X extinction, campaign that we had in many parts of Europe,
you just mentioned what happened in Ireland, but it's also happenedin other parts of Europe as part of a of a nation building

(11:13):
and the, the part of, civilization building, in partalso as a longer,
Christianization process,where the, the wolf had a very negative image.
So we have all that negative image, of the wolves,in many European countries, and only in the 20th century,

(11:34):
probably in the second half only we have this new understandingof a positive wilderness and of positive wild animals.
I mean, kind of the, the new ideas of how we relate to nature,
which you find underlyingconservation, rewilding movements and so on and so on.
So, so this is the reason and of course, this is still active.It's still there. We we have both now.

(11:59):
We have both kind of this positive understanding in most Europeancountries of, a wilderness and wild animals such as wolves.
But we also have this older notions which kind of this typicalview of that humans are kind of in power and, and they are
the ones, were supposed to bring order to, to natural processes,especially when it comes to regional and local levels.

(12:23):
Yeah.
So it's, it's humans that, that actually arethe ones who were supposed to be, in power over wild animals.
So these are still that, but the other thing isthat the wolves themselves, they also play a role in, in these images.
So they this images of the wolf and also the,the negative images of wolves, they don't come from nowhere.

(12:49):
They they don't come out of the blue.
They, they have a basis in wolf behavior too.
Yeah. Of course not. Not in every dimension.
But there is a, a core about what wolves doand how they live, and especially how they hunt and kill,
which makes them really special and stand out. Yeah.
So if you know how wolves kill and also kind of other kind, it'sbasically, it's sometimes not really nice.

(13:16):
Yeah. That the way they hunt and kill can appear cruel to us. Yeah.
And especially when it comes to to surplus killing, so when, whenwolves kill more than they could actually eat in that particular moment.
So when they kill 20,000 sheep in one night, for example.
So, so there is a basis for seeing them as, as cruel animalswho seem to kill more than they actually need,

(13:44):
which could seem unnatural, even and kind of these two levels,they seem to mix all the time,
not so much in places like Ireland and or the UK, where,where the wolves are extinct now for for quite a long time.
You just basically you have two stories from somewhere else, but,and it was the same in Germany until the year 2000.

(14:05):
We just have two stories about wolves from far away.
But now people living in the countryside where the wolves are,they know this.
They have this experience of how it is like,
what it is like when wolves go hunting sheepand when they kill them, when they encounter them and so on.
And these new experiences with wolves, they become mixed upwith these more traditional stories that you know about wolves,

(14:31):
but also become a mixed up what you know from scienceand from sight, from documentaries and so on.
So it's in Germany.
We're living at a time now, in the past25 years, where all these things become mixed up.
Now people gain experiential knowledge of wolves for thevery first time, but it's still at the very beginning of coexistence.

(14:54):
And this is kind of what is so difficult,why there's such a dynamic and, and this is also why it is so emotional.
Yeah. Because everything is new.Everything is in movement, everything is changing.
And that, of course, causes a lot of uncertainty.
And this is the time where emotions, boil over.
Yeah.

(15:15):
And people usually don't like change, especiallyif the change is perceived as a, as a negative, as a negative one.
You have in your book a lot of very handson, let's say, stories and experiences and I one that
I remember, very, very vividly is when you were on the kill sidewith, with the wolf kill expert

(15:43):
and I, I took from, from the, the descriptions that the,
the, the atmosphere, which is something that you're talking about,your book, the atmosphere here was very tense.
Could you, could you tell us, like how how this, you know,like, I'm, I'm curious to hear that first, first hand, you know,

(16:04):
what was in the air when you guys showed up there?
Yeah.
I mean, the the context in which I bring this story is, it's basically kind of a discussion of this claim that you often hear
that people in the countryside, when wolves have returned that day,you have to live in fear.

(16:25):
It's something that that you hear all over the place,not just in Germany, but, up to the United States everywhere.
And I wanted to understand a little bit more what what
that might mean, actually, to to live in fearwhen when you live in wolves territory and kind of
maybe the events that most emblematic Lee, stand for this fearis actually the kill sites, of domestic animals, mostly off of sheep.

(16:54):
So I accompanied, one of the,the wolf management's, official experts to to decide, she,
she got a phone call early in the morningthat there was a, wolf attack on sheep and that the thing was,
it was the third attack,within three months on that same flock, of that same shepherd.

(17:15):
And in the first one,he had already lost more than 30 sheep in one night.
So we were called to M and, he was in, in one of these villages
where, where the there were there were a lot of attacks for, for what?
And five years now, it was the home of the so-called horse and top pack.

(17:37):
And, with quite a famous wolf.
They, they, they were quite a notorious pack, for killing sheep.
And they were it was kind of the centeralso of some kind of resistance growing, for wolves.
So we we knew that it was,
really hot area.
And in terms of the politics that went on and of feeling,kind of arising on, on,

(18:04):
and on the previous, on the, on previous occasion that the same expert,she was there and, and she was,
she was kind of verbally attacked by, by people standing therebecause kind of she represented wolf management
and people were really angry, because nothing happenedand the wolves could continue attacking sheep and so on.

(18:27):
And this was kind of the context.And this is why it was a little bit tense from the very beginning.
So it was this atmosphere of stay.
They are situated within a whole process space.
There's much that that comes from past events and encounters.
And this already gave a certain emotional tone to what was happeningright there on this day.

(18:53):
So we we arrived there and we were greeted by the,the wife of the, of the shepherd.
And, she took us to, to the meadow.
And before we went there,there was already kind of a, a cage standing there with a wounded sheep
that had some of his flesh torn away from, one of his hind legs just standing there

(19:14):
empathically, just not doing anything, just standing there,but kind of all of this wound.
And and then we were going into the meadow and,there was kind of the surviving sheep.
They were all kind of huddled together, standing kind of at the end.
And there was one of the sheep dogs kind of running aroundand then kind of chasing away a few ravens

(19:35):
that were kind of feasting on, one of the corpses.How long after the attack you guys arrived there?
I was just kind of four hours or so after the attack. Okay? Okay. Yeah.
So we just walked around the meadow. I'm trying to get a sensewhat actually the situation is.
And and seeing how many sheep there are.
So we we found a few parsley eating sheep lying around.

(19:58):
We we saw kind of the bloody entrailskind of crisscrossing over the meadow, bits of wool lining everywhere.
There was it already began to, to stink a little bit to carcassesand kind of the flies, circling around it.
There was a dead sheep lying in a stream right next to it.
And yeah, we were walking with the wife of the shepherd,and she was really quiet.

(20:22):
Didn't say a lot.
Then her husband came in, he just got, a kind of a small machine toto get to pick up the carcasses and remove them.
And he was the same, really. Kind of taciturn, hardly saying anything.
And, there was this kind of sense of hopelessness.
Powerlessness. It's just kind of why why does this happen?

(20:45):
Yeah.
And the, the experts kind of started kind of,measuring me, teeth marks and taking swaps and everything.
And that bit were what, what really is what we couldn't understandis when, when we kind of walked around there is that, that we saw. Yes.

(21:07):
There was an electric fence on there, but the whole side of the street,more than 100m, basically, wasn't fenced at all.
Yeah.
And it was a really small stream, just kind of 2 or 3m.
So, and there was no fence at all.
And it was the third time, the third attack in three months.

(21:28):
And you have had wolf attacks, in this villagefor more than five years.
Yeah.
And we knew he wouldn't get compensationwithout a proper fence there. Yeah.
And when I asked him, he was like,
even with a fence.
What's the difference? Yeah.
My neighbor over there, he had an attack last week,and he had a fence, so, but but you wouldn't get compensation.

(21:56):
Yeah. Shrugged his shoulders.
Was was nothing. Yeah.
It was like, Also, he gave up, a few months after that,
stopped where we were with sheep.
So so then there was kind of this this really just a sense of reallyhopelessness, in there, the sheep where we're still really scared.

(22:16):
Then there were kind of people, neighbors from the village
coming in, when they saw us getting around them,when they saw the big call from the wolf management.
So there he started talking with the shepherds that were kind of,
a young father coming in with a small kid,and they were looking at everything, and, and so, I mean,

(22:37):
the more and more people were coming, and then you could kind of sensethat it might get a little bit difficult.
So we, we tried to grab up and, and, drive off again, as soon as all the paperwork was with them.
Yeah.
So, so this is kind of that was kind of a typical event,when you go to, to some of these sites, I went to others as well.

(23:02):
But this one was the one with the most sheep killed.
And then you could just see that there, there was kind of a lot goingon. It wasn't just fear.
Fear was kind of perhaps the least thing, going on there. Yeah.
So it was mostly kind of this depressingfeelings, this feelings of hopelessness and powerlessness,

(23:23):
maybe also of anger towards the wolf management, towardswolves, some sympathy with the, with the dead sheep, of course.
With the the neighbors coming in.
Their sympathy for the shepherds.
Yeah.
So there was a lot going on that that kind of made up this atmosphereand was that area where the wolves naturally colonize that.

(23:46):
Yet that's that's entire Germany, right? There was no. Exactly.
Yeah.
So what do you have to know about about Germany is, that there was no introduction or will stay all came back by themselves,
from, from western Poland basically.
And some from the alpine population, France, Italy.
So there there was no reintroduction program.

(24:10):
So that is, that is straight away against,you know, because the conventional wisdom says that if the wolves
are naturally going to colonize, then the, the conflict will be lower,
because on the one hand, you don't have as much of this humanon the human, let's call it this way.

(24:31):
Elements right of like, oh, it's your wolf. You're introduce them.
You're in the air quotes, obviously.
And at the same time, there is also,I think there is a some, peer reviewed science to back the thesis
that the wolves that are colonizingnaturally there tend to get less in trouble, less in conflict

(24:52):
with, with humansbecause they're you know, naturally trying to figure out.
And they don't want to too much conflict themselves. Do you think that
your experiences are telling you that this is not entirely true?
Or is it like, wow, that thing would be totally off the chartif there was where reintroduced?

(25:15):
There? Yeah,I mean, it would definitely be a different kind of situation.
Yeah.
I mean, aI can only speculate that the, the conflicts would be even worse.
But what I also see is that, especially among those
who oppose wolves, so especially in, in the farming and hunting community,

(25:38):
for, for them, you often hear the argumentand then that's not a particularly a German thing.
You hear that all over the place.
Also in other countries, even when the wolves come back by themselves,people suspect that they were introduced.
And, so, you know, there there are all these stories,I mean, in Germany, there was this, this one once, this funny story

(26:02):
about that, the the border police actually, got hold of a whole truckfull of wolves at the border.
So seemingly, conservationists tried to sneak in the wolves.
We always knew it,and it was a big story in one of the biggest hunting magazines.
And then the police intervened, and said, well, actually,I mean, we we found a truck and we stopped

(26:27):
the truck full of wolves,but it was, a truck full of bikes called Steppenwolf's.
Yeah.
So, yeah, it's, but these are all these stories.
I mean, I heard even kind of this rumors from from some Greek islandwhere where people had these,
rumors about wolvesbeing dropped by parachute from planes to the island.

(26:54):
Yeah.
So. Oh, I, I heard a story like.
So the ones I heard was like the black helicopterswho are dropping wolves.
And, I think in Norway, blue Volkswagen camper vans are the ones to.
So to watch out for those.
And so yeah, this is this is the big problem.

(27:14):
I mean so, so from that point of view for, for those people who are veryinvolved in anti wolf activism, for them this was an introduction.
Yeah. This was no natural re colonization.
The question of course is do they do people really believe it.
And I think kind of partly they do, yes.

(27:37):
But partly it's also, a political argument.
Yeah, it kind of it's supposed to diminish the status of the wolves.
They're not real wolves.They are only introduced here probably from an enclosure.
It's it's a bit similar like this.
Other stories about wolf hybrids.

(27:58):
That's, what we have in Germany. They are not real wolves.
They are all hybrids, and therefore they shouldn't be protectedand we should start hunting them and so on.
Yeah.
So that's the difficulty with,with with all these, rumors that there are.
And this is also, again, where the effective dimension, comes in.
These are all stories that, circulate in order to stir emotions and to,

(28:25):
to change the, the supportive mood in society against wolves.
Yeah.
So this is this is part of the political dimension of of emotions that'sbeen going on in the last 25 years now that we have wolves in Germany.
And that reminds me of, we had an entire episodewhen we talked about the, the narratives, the build narratives.

(28:50):
And that was, unsurprisingly, about the program of, red Wolves.
Protection of red wolves in the United States.
And there was like,the same arguments are it's not they've, you know, they're like hybrids.
There's this there's, there's something else.
And, I spoke with a scientist who wrote the entire paper on
how those narratives are being builtand how they are then affecting whatever is going on.

(29:16):
I just noticeI use the word affecting, which is just, just speaks to the,
to to the, to the thing that that you're right, you know, like whatwhat that was, when I was reading your book
and this is another sort of like a question you also spoke with aI think it was a hunter, but he was like a unty wolf, person.

(29:38):
And he asked you a question like,oh, are you this wolf maniac or something like that?
And and what struck me was that
once you guys finished a conversation,he was like, like, oh, I'm not anti wolf.
Oh no, no, I want this just like my way.
So I almost feel like nobody are these, there's fewer peoplewho going to be like oh I'm straight up anti war but I hate wolves.

(30:07):
Maybe especially in the hunting community.
But it's more like no, no, no no no I'm not anti wolves.
But here's how it's supposed to be done.
Yeah I mean this is this has probably to do with let's say kind of the,the rules of how public debates go in our societies.
Yeah.
And this is also something that is, in my view,sometimes misrepresented, even by some scientists.

(30:37):
So the idea we sometimes gets and I know in placeswith the strong rewire leading movement, that might be the case.
And then in some ways, but we you often get the impressionthat, kind of the return of large predators,
whether by themselves or through reintroduction programs is kind of,a project of a really small elite in the country.

(31:06):
So just by a small group of people
from urban areas, from the capital or wherever,and kind of the real people.
Yeah.
So kind of the majority of the people actually didn't want thatwhich which is kind of a distortion of how things are,
because we assess societyand also the majority of society, at least on us.

(31:30):
I'm kind of speaking Germany in particular,but also for, for other countries.
We have decided as a society that we would value biodiversity,and that in within that concept of biodiversity,
we also also value these species just because kind of,we give them an existential right to exist, basically.

(31:55):
And we say that that's good.
And, and we have extirpated many species,and now we want to do our best,
actually to make up for that past mistake and help them getting back.
Yeah.
So it's something that we as a majority society actually decidedit wasn't, an elite project
of some all powerful conservation lobbyists in Brussels or wherever.

(32:20):
Of course there is lobbying going on, but from all sides.
But what I want to say, it's
it's been a project
that was, kind of agreed on by the majority of society, basically,
and this is that we have something that we need to take into accountwhen we talk about all this.

(32:43):
It's because at the moment and in the recent years,we we have, of course, more and more of these populist movements now,
who want to, portray also when it comes to wolves, that the,there is some elites
that basically rules over us, and over the majority of people, and that also is responsible for reintroducing wolves.

(33:11):
To the country.
And that's part of a wider right wing populist movement, of course.
And, and they work, with,the topic of wolves again, because it's such an emotional topic.
Yeah.
So it's, it's really difficult these days to, to really understandall these different levels of political conflicts.

(33:34):
That's wolves are, basically entangled.
They're exploited,I think. I feel like they're exploited in all that thing.
And, and what you're said about the society, I guess this is exactlywhere there's such a danger as divisions in the society come from.
That. Okay.
You say society,we decide like, who is who is that society who decided that I'm not the.

(33:58):
I'm not me. Not you. And this is. This is where it all.
Yeah.
Dawson, I have a, one observer.
I made an observation while I was reading,and one of the chapters you were talking about
how people were afraid of their grandchildren,that they're going to be harmed by wolves.

(34:23):
And and so on.
And I don't know exactly why,but my impression was that there was different attitudes to wolves.
Depend on the age group. Was that something that you observed?
And if if so, like, what were the differences between like,you know, with the older people, had different attitude toward wolves.

(34:49):
Yeah. So to this, this was kind of series of interviews.
I did in, in relation to it actually, the place where I went to the, to the kill side as well.
And, and actually I talked with a couple who were, grandparents,I talked with,
with a guy who was kind of like, like my agekind of now kind of early 50s.

(35:16):
And his, daughter was also brieflythere as she was kind of, late teens or around 20, maybe.
And, and of course, kind of when you look at those peoplewho are actively engaged, in this political debate about, well,
it's mostly people my age and older, which probably also has to dowith the fact that, a lot of people who are involved stay,

(35:45):
there are hunters and, and of course, wewe still have that kind of the age
disparity in the hunting community that there are a lot of older hunterssay there are also younger ones now. But,
the people usually kind of involved in that,they are usually a little bit older.
The interesting thing was then, with when I spokewith the daughter of this activist,

(36:09):
she had a kind of a mixed, mixed feelings in regard to wolves,because on the one hand, her dad was a hunter.
Were all family and relations neighbors.
There were a lot of hunters in there.So she was raised in a hunting family.
But then from school,she was exposed to more kind of scientific narratives about wolves.

(36:31):
So she was actually, she learned that,to have quite a positive attitudes towards wolves, from school.
But then the third thing was, and that was kind of what madethe difference for her is she had experience herself with wolves.
She saw the
sheep that were killed by and andand she told me that, I know dead animals.

(36:57):
I know how that animals look like. Yeah, I know that from hunting.
When my dad comes homeand and so on. Or when I went hunting with my dad.
So she she knew that.
But she said there's something different about when Wolf still.
And and this is something that I call the necro esthetics, with this,
like scientific term, for it.

(37:19):
So it's kind of the, the pattern of sensory experiencethat is so particular about wolves kill sites.
Yeah.
In, in German,we actually we the, the word for it is, it's called a this, a rupture.
And what's will do is they, they, they rip apart and,and so this is part of how they kill,

(37:42):
and of course, this is very different from how we, in our daysnow, experience animal death if we experience it at all.
Because what happened in our societiesis in that in the last 100 years,
we have tried more and more actually,to exclude animal death from sites.

(38:03):
So it's usually put out of sites. It's,
it's,
it's even put to particular places, like slaughterhouses, for example.
It's put in the hand of specialists, like kind of butchers, for example.
Yeah.
So we,we removed it more and more so that even in the countryside these days,

(38:24):
I would claim that most people actually don't have much experiencewith animal deaths and killing animals anymore.
Yeah. Apart from from very few, like hunters, for example.
And of course, I mean, we have also sanitized, animal deaths,also because of developments of animal welfare and so on.
Yeah.
So it's all about if you have to, to kill animals,which we agreed as a society,

(38:48):
something that we allow for foods and other certain, purposes.
Then it must be done in an ethical way.
It must be clean and it's really quickand so on, without much suffering.
And of course, that that's always been an ideal.
I mean, we know the stories from slaughterhouses.

(39:08):
We know that this idea is not necessarilypart of the everyday work practices there.
We also know that there's a lot of suffering and violencegoing on in hunting.
Not every shot is really the single clean shots that you want to do.
But generally we have this idea in our headsthat this is how animals should look like.

(39:31):
And then we come to a world skin side. Yeah.
And we see all these ripped apart animals.
Maybe some of them even alive still.
And and it's, it looks like, just like, oneshepherds told me it looks like a bomb had exploded.
And of course, we are not used to that kind of deathand that kind of killing.

(39:54):
And and of course, in comparison to what we are used to,
it looks really cruel.
And therefore we have strong emotional reactions to it.
But what we don't see is that it's a quite an artificial situationthat we created in the first place.
And it's also an idealized, situationwhich not always looks like we want to.

(40:21):
But, at least this is what how we want it to be.
So what the will spring back basically is this,this old esthetic basically of death and killing, which we fought.
We had left behind.
And now we've become really sensitive to these things. Yeah.
So we basically we don't have to stomach anymore for these picturesthat wolves create, near our villages where the sheep passes.

(40:50):
And this is one of the biggest issues, actually,I think what drives people's negative attitudes towards wolves.
And so even the daughter of this activist,who was raised in the school with this positive scientific
narratives of wolves and their role in the ecology of all, even forher age was hard to stomach, kind of the sides of the suffering.

(41:14):
And that sheep so, so, so this is one of the main questions actually,because this will always be part of coexistence.
Yeah.
I mean, we might manage to improve her protection, in the long runand to have lesser, incidences, but,
the wolves will also develop and there will always be incidenceswhere protection is not 100%, going.

(41:39):
Well, the shepherd might have done the small mistake.
The wolves have found it and got in.
So these incidents, this wolf kills,they will always be a part of coexistence.
So what we need to learn,I think in the long term, is that living with wolves,

(42:01):
demands a certain kind of resilience, emotional resilience.
Two sides like this.
Yeah.
So not thinking that this type of of killing, animals is somethingunnatural.
Yeah. And some would even say this is positively evil. What they do.

(42:22):
But just to see it is. Well, this is how predators hunt and kill.
Yeah, it's it's it's basically nature.
Yeah. We we might not like it, but we have to deal with it.
I think there is a also, kind of like an expectationof how the animal should behave and what it should.
You know, again,you had this, this story and just for, for all the folks,

(42:46):
I, I really recommend that that bookbecause there's like a ton of, like a real, real stories and you can
they make you think at is they made me think,where two hunters, were filming interaction with wolves.
They see the wolves on the, on the edge of the, of the, forest.

(43:06):
And and their conversation was, half jokingly, but there was like,oh, it's not natural.
Oh, it's not like the expectation of what is natural.
And then, you know, when I was reading thatand knowing about the wolves, what I know,
my thought was like,how is it not natural like that Wolf is interacting with you.

(43:30):
This big ape, which is like maybe a little bit curious what,you know, like, how come you can,
you know, authoritatively say like,oh, it's not natural. Like, well, it just happened.
Therefore it is natural. Right?
So this is this expectation that, oh,this is how the wolves should behave.
And when they not behave the way we expect, there's like,oh, there are hybrids, there's this there that there's something else.

(43:55):
Exactly. And this is also kind of one of the biggest problems.
And, and unfortunately it's a problemwhere science actually contributed to most of the misunderstanding.
So kind of what I, what I argue there in, in that context actually alsoand why I find this, this so interesting, the story is that

(44:18):
there is this, understandingof, of wild animals in this old style thinking,
kind of the dichotomy between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom,that we are kind of special and exceptional and,
and that the, the natural reaction of wild animals to humanswould be to, to be scared of humans

(44:43):
and to to be shy and to basically to to run away from you,which is partly true.
Some, some, colleagues of mine,some, some, wolf biologists from, from Norway.
They, they did some, series of experiments also in Germanyand I think in Sweden, too, where they tried, to have experiments

(45:07):
about what happens when humans and wolves, meet and they used, GPUs,collared wolves, actually, to find out where they were.
And, and then kind of, had a team of two peopletrying to find them and approach them and provoke a meeting.
Yeah. The problem was that the experiments almost never worked.

(45:29):
They could never see wolves.
It was long before they could find the wolves.
The wolves had already sent them and were off.
Yeah.
So in in a way wolves behaves quite similar to, to Lynx actually.
And that even kind of talking with peoplewho have 25 years of experience
of living with wolves in eastern Germany, hardlyany one of them have has ever seen.

(45:54):
Yeah. And this is reality.
This is what coexistence for most people who don't have sheep,how coexistence look like they are basically they're not there.
Yeah, they they will never see a wolf really in real life.
They are still present. Yeah.
In terms of this affective qualities. Yeah.

(46:15):
So you you still feel them around. Yeah.But you will actually never meet them.
This this is, this is the standard of coexistence.Actually quite boring for most people.
This is also the reason why most people in, in wolf country,they don't really care about because it doesn't affect them in any way.
Yeah. They don't have anything to do.
They're they're not standing in your front gardenall the time or, or come to beg for food or anything.

(46:41):
Mostly they're they're out of sight. Yeah.And then you don't need to think about them.
Of course, it's different for when you are a hunteror when you are a sheep farmer.
But for the majority of people, even in the countryside,they're just not there.
Yeah. And, and this is something that we shouldn't forget.

(47:01):
So all the impressions that we have from the media, from social media,that everything is geared
towards conflict,this does not really represent what's really happening on the ground.
Apart from
villages like the one that I just described,
where it's been a conflict where there was continuous attacks, oftenmore than ten attacks every year for ten years, basically.

(47:30):
But then you have to ask, so why has that happened? Yeah.
Why was the situation there so difficult?
Why was there so much conflict?
Why did the wolves manage to kill so many animals year after year?
And as I explained earlier, is why when I came to the sideand one part of the pasture

(47:51):
wasn't fenced at all,this was the main driver of the continued conflict.
All these years.
And I think you mentioned it in the summer podcastwith, Jonny Hansen as well.
The problem was they didn't want to fence properly.
Yeah, they didn't want to accept the wolves in their region.

(48:13):
They wanted to have a wolf free zone.
They said, well, we have sheep here.
We can't have wolves. Therefore the wolves have to go.
Yeah. I don't fence off my my pasture. Yeah.
Even though they are, of course,compensation programs for killed animals.
And there are programs to finance the fences.
It's always changing depending on the federal state,but it's up to 100%.

(48:37):
They even might get help from a wolf conservationNGO, actually, to build the fence or to maintain the fence.
So they there's so many things they could do, but they don't want to.
Yeah.
And this has kind of this has driven the whole conflict over many yearsuntil finally the lead

(48:58):
Wolf of the pack died naturally after more than ten years.
And then kind of the attack stopped.
But, I've just read in the news that the attacks actually started againthis year.
Now, with a different pack.
Now, so it seems like they still don't fence, properly there.

(49:19):
So, so and then and this is the,
the tragedy of the whole conflict, you could actually do a lotif there weren't all these politics involved.
Yeah, yeah.
Listen, you're I think that your argumentis that a lot of problems through the wolf management
is that the wolf management is a lot about emotionsand about about these affects and the atmosphere's.

(49:45):
And those management strategies are not taking that into account.
So I want to bring that a little into the current events.
Not so calm, but at the moment it isit is like another, another stage or another act of,
process of lowering the protection status of wolves in Europefrom moving them from annex four to annex five.

(50:09):
We spoke about this, at length on the podcast.I wrote a blog about it, etc., etc.
so, I know I'm going to be repeating myself. Here.
Long story short, Wolf, be not strictly protected.It will be. Just protect it will.
Which will, give some flexibility in management.
And of course, there is a big outcry.

(50:31):
I think that's the only word I can use from environmental NGOs.
And what's your take on this?
Is that the right move that will help to address those,
you know, emotional aspects of it?
Even though we know that probably huntingis not the greatest way of preventing,

(50:55):
preventing the attacksbecause you get more of the, you know, wolves that are dispersing
because their packs are getting this disrupted, etc., etc..
But where I sit, I feel like this will go the long way,
or at least some way towardsaddressing those emotional aspects of wolf management.

(51:16):
So I'm curious where you sit, on this issue.
I'm a bit critical with this whole move.
And it in particular, I kind of I'm critical,let's say, as a scientist, because I don't appreciate
how the on the line kind of pushed through, this this,this whole project, against science, scientific evidence, basically.

(51:42):
And I know, I mean, there among the wolf scientists,
I think there was just a paper published about two weeks agoabout the continued recovery of wolves and the success story.
And that's where the European populationkind of doubled in the last ten, ten years or so.
So, yes, it's overall it's a success story.

(52:05):
Yeah. So no doubt about that.
But the problem,of course, is that when you look into different parts of the country,
or in different parts of Europe,then at some much more diverse picture that you get.
Yeah. So, it might be an overall success story. Yes.
But when you look to Norway, Sweden, Finland,it's it's not a success story at all.

(52:33):
It's actually going down basically, when you look at Switzerland,
they've just introduced the most massive wolf managementprogram culling program ever in the country.
So 20% or something, is it? Yeah. At least.
But in some areas it's basically, the they get rid of whole wolf packs basically too.

(52:57):
So there, there is a certain tendency in several countries now that wolf
coexistence, is to be interpreted as kind of the minimum population,
and the minimum population is usually dictated more or less
by certain stakeholders,that have a really strong lobbying power in Brussels.

(53:23):
Mainly farmers association face, farmers unions, land owners,and so on.
And it's an increasing trend.And we have the same in Germany, basically.
And and this is something that is slightly worrying meabout kind of the overall picture and the overall success story.

(53:43):
The good stab, that recent article by John Dingell and 30 others, basically says that,
one of the most important factors actually, for that recoverywas the protective status of goods.
Yeah.
And it's exactly that that is now most probably going to be loweredif they get through.

(54:05):
So it will from now on it would probably be much more difficult.
And when you look at a country like Germany, yes, we have wolvesand they have been returning for 25 years,
but almost exclusively to the east and to northern Germany,there are hardly any wolf packs,

(54:25):
in southern Germany and in central Germany,they're still in my native federal state, here in Boston and back.
We don't have a single pack.
And this is where the Black Forest is.Yeah, one of the biggest forest areas that we have.
But still, after all, this is not a single pack. Yeah. Bavaria.
Just a very few. They could could have many more.

(54:48):
So, so what happens to these still, Wolf,three regions that we have in Europe, same with France.
Yeah, France has a wolf population, but more than 90% ofthat is in the southeastern area of the country, in the alpine region.
The rest of the country still no wolves?

(55:09):
Yeah. Apart from the occasional wolves wandering through.
So it's I really would be careful in kind of painting and,a really positive picture of, of the immediate future now
and also because what they, these articles do not talk aboutis that, the connectivity of subpopulations within Europe,

(55:31):
because what we have seen in recent yearsis that we have entire migration fences
going up in several countries,and we have African swine fever fences going up in several countries.
Yeah.
So, when you look at the wolf population in Germany is you see,there is a fence on the German Danish border shutting that off.

(55:56):
There are two fences along the German Polish border.
There's an anti migration fence, the Polish Belarusian border within eastern Germany.
It's criss crossed by African swine fever fences everywhere,sometimes even fencing in whole wolf packs.
So we have fences going up in Europe everywhere,basically destroying all these corridors

(56:23):
that wolves had in order to, to feed into each other's, genetic, pool, basically.
And the same with Finland, and the Russian border,where a big sense is going up now.
So we have fences everywhere.
So, so this this is something that we need to take into account as wellwhen we think of this success story.

(56:46):
But in regard to your question about what the effects of thismove in terms of, kind of emotion management or asset management,
we know from, from Sweden, for example, or Norwaythat when you introduce wolf hunting,
it doesn't have any effect on, on people's attitudes on all wolves.

(57:08):
The hunters are still as opposed to wolves as they,as they were before to call it something.
It's it's not enough.
Because even then, you I mean, you have to to readthe, the face position paper on, on wolves.
And then you see what the, the long term plan isand what the, the lobbying campaign is about.

(57:32):
It's about lowering the protective status of wolves.
It's about, kind of getting more permissions to cull individual wolves,
but then it'sthe next step is to have the quota account, like in Sweden.
And then you have, a normal hand with, open and close seasons.

(57:53):
And in the end, you basically have, a hunt that is not as much,
different from hunting any other kind of animal,just like roe deer or wild boar or whatever.
And this is the end.
The end, a basically of the hunting association, both in Europe,but also in Germany and many other European countries.

(58:16):
So they want the wolf to be just like any other gameunder their responsibility, not someone else's responsibility.
And this is kind of the main struggle that's been going onamong recreational hunters in Europe, for, for decades.
Basically.
It's it's the question or the struggle of power over wild animalswas in Germany, for example, hunting was an aristocratic privilege.

(58:42):
No one else was allowed to hunt,
so they were the only ones who were responsibleand in power to decide what happens to wild animal populations.
And they were the ones who could decide what happens to wolves.And they want that power again.
But now conservation has stepped in.
And of course, it's not in their power anymorebecause they are protected species.

(59:05):
Now it's hunters against the state are in the struggle for power.
So in in that sense,I don't think that's just lowering the protected status now.
And maybe introducing a little bit of hunting,
will change anything in their attitudesbecause their attitude is wolves should be treated like, normal game.

(59:26):
And we should be empowered to, to kill them if we want to.
And the fact is, for most recreational hunters in Europe,they have a really negative attitudes towards war.
So we we all know it'sand and I don't think there's this will change anything.
Yeah.
Because this negative attitude towards wolves is at leastso when I speak to Germany, where I've done research,

(59:49):
we found this for about ten years now.
It's part and parcel of their relationship to other game animals.
Predators are always seen and historically been seenas the enemy of the animals one cares for, and it's responsible for.
And that's that's a fundamental conflictthat you can't get rid of by changing the legislation.

(01:00:13):
Yeah.
Yeah, I, I, I got this from not word for word from one of.
I don't think it was in your book or maybe, but maybe one that some other book that I, I came to the conclusions
like I was always, showing and thinking about similaritiesbetween hunters and farmers in the society,

(01:00:37):
in some conflicts and how they're treatedand how they're positioned, let's say, in the society.
But recently, I'm coming to the conclusionthat there is that fundamentally hunters
attitude is incompatible, with the with farmers attitude,because for a farmer, wolf is an enemy.

(01:01:02):
And I feel like for a hunter, the wolf is a brother, so to say.
And and to your point, it's like,
you know, making air quotes are the real hunters, or is it like,
kind of like a borderline farming because are we have all thoseand all we have all those game animals and we need to take care of them.

(01:01:26):
It's it's pushing the hunters attitude towardsbeing like a, almost like a farmer of those wild game.
And therefore the wolf is not anymore sort of like an animalthat does the same thing and have the same skills.
And is this, you know, quote unquote, brother,but rather this is an enemy of our game and, and so on and so forth.

(01:01:50):
So me, I'm, I'm afraid this,this view of, wolves as the brothers of, hunters
that that might be, had kind of been thereand lost our view and inspired by, more from American Natives.
It's,
at least it's not what happened in most parts of Europe in history.

(01:02:13):
It's never been considered an equal or a brother or anything like it.
So, I mean,
so this is about, kind of especially a kind of German history, but,
seeing that Germany was also spread through the Prussian Empire,over Poland, up to the Baltic states, on the one hand.

(01:02:34):
And then the harp spoke, empire going up to Hungaryand, former Yugoslavia and so on.
So it's it's really kind of an old hunting traditionthat covers many parts of Europe.
And in that hunting, tradition,it was, as I said, hunting wasn't aristocratic privilege.

(01:02:55):
So the hunters were themselves, from the aristocracy, and, and,
although they didn't own their game animals, that they still feltthey were part of their land.
So it had to do with the conception of land,of Socratic land ownership.
And and for them, I mean, what they were interested in were especiallythe, the Red deer and kind of the wild boar and and so on.

(01:03:21):
And of course, they had to this, this responsibility, but also the,the rights to, to harvest these populations of, of these game species.
And the job of a hunter at that time was two things.
The one thing was to organize this one was the I start to seeand the other one was to protect the game population from human poaching

(01:03:44):
and from predators.
And this is the reason why the aristocracy wanted to get rid of wolvesand bears and lynx
and all these extermination campaigns,perhaps that aim of protecting your game.
Yeah.
So from from that point of view, it's always
been an enemy, for, for hunters, for them,it was the so-called outwitted, kind of the predatory game.

(01:04:12):
And this, this were always considered really negative.
Yeah, you could do with them.
So hunting ethics didn't really apply to, to this kind of game.
You could do with them whatever.
And we knew that the way they huntedthem was really cruel sometimes. Yeah.
The same as with foxes. How they treated foxes.

(01:04:32):
It's, it's also similar.
So it's always been part of the European hunting conditions.
And in that sense, but the other thing is about the influence of, farmers and farmers relationship to wild animals.
This is also be the case.
So, for example, wolf hunting was actually one of the very few that's,were not exclusively reserved

(01:04:56):
for the aristocracy, but everyone could kilowatts, and of course, the other people who killed wolves were farmers.
And and of course, they, they couldn't go hunting with a weaponand so on.
So they use the most cruel methods, like poisoning and traps.
And what do we have now in Germany, in the hunting community,

(01:05:17):
is that there is a quite a large percentagealso of farmer hunters in the hunting community.
And so we actually have a mix of these traditional, hunters attitudestowards animals and then the farmers attitudes towards animals.
Yeah.
And I mean, hunters had always had to, accommodate, farmers,because their game was actually damaging the fields and so on.

(01:05:46):
But now we actually we, we have both.
And the problem with wolves is that they,they have, a negative reputation from both sides.
Yeah.
For let's say Red deer is positive with the hunters,but negative with the farmers, with wolves.
It's negative on both sides.
And this is what makes it really difficultbecause there is actually there's no positive relationship to wolves,

(01:06:14):
either in hunting or in farming communities.
And this is one of the major problemsthat I see, actually, for our current coexistence problems,
because I also I hear a lot of colleagues,also social scientists who say, well, they we need to pay more attention
to the voice of the rural communities of hunters and farmersbecause they are the one affected, which is true.

(01:06:38):
Yeah.
All this things about compensation programsand helping them to cope with Cope systems, this is all true.
But what is also true is that we shouldn't forget thatthese are the two groups that actually extirpated in the first place.
And when you talk with them, the yeah, maybe the same attitude,if not a similar

(01:07:01):
attitude is still presentin the contemporary communities of hunters and farmers.
It's still negative. So,
if you if you just wanted to do
what what they want to do,you would have more free sounds basically just like to do in Norway.
So it's really a balancing act of, hearing them.

(01:07:24):
On the one hand and supporting them,but also, kind of still protecting wolves because they have a really,
still a really strongly negative attitude in some parts of the communitythat have very powerful political lobbies.
I would love to be able to say, Carson,that you burst my bubble about hunting community, but you didn't.

(01:07:48):
I'm well aware, well aware of of, you know, and I'm also well aware
how slippery slope it is to talk about real hunters or real huntingwhile talking about something.
I've almost no hunters.
Do and I, I yeah, I mean, I, I actually,I have to say, you kind of when you research wolves and hunters,

(01:08:11):
it brings out the worst in hunters, actually.
I mean, I, you know, from from our previous conversation that I've donea lot of research on hunting and also about all other kinds of things.
And we talk about hunting ethics,also about the positive use of these old rituals and so on.
But really, when it comes to wolves, it's you really see that there isthere is something there's a need in the hunting community, actually,

(01:08:40):
to critically reflecton their relationship with wild, with large predators.
It's, it's an issue.
And I think it's something they should deal withbecause it's, it seems to be from an old world for for me somehow,
I mean, it's okay if you're an aristocratand you want to protect your game.

(01:09:01):
If you're living in the
Highlands on a game farmas you protect your, red deer from from wolves.
But if you consider that, that it's not just about animals,but it's also about the whole ecology of our landscapes.
It's about bigger things.
It's not just about personal interests, but about the bigger picture.

(01:09:24):
And then, and therefore, I think they need to, to work on that.
So, shout outs to you to face and Brussels,I think this is really something, something that's, that you should
consider, especially since we in our last podcast, we, we talked about,that killing animals always has an effect on the hunters themselves.

(01:09:46):
Yeah.
So we have to ask kind of,what kind of hunter are you when you hunt like this?
And I would also say, what kind of hunter are you if you can only see wolves as a problem?
That's it, that's it.
And yeah, shout out to face and shout out to Dave Scanlon,who was, on the podcast many times as well.

(01:10:07):
I, you know, I, I feel like face is, a little bit powerless versusthose big hunting organizations.
I, I wish they had more leverage over them.
But I think that face is tiny comparedto national hunting organizations.
And, you know, I was on that conferenceand I heard first hand, one of the,

(01:10:33):
let's say, top folks in one of the one of the big,if not the biggest European hunting organization, no names named,
who was, you know, from his home, from his speaking place, were, say,like, oh, yeah, we are all for more biodiversity and less predators.
And I was just like, fail spy, make a dude like, bro,do you even know what biodiversity is?

(01:10:57):
You know, I was just like, oh God.
Anyway, that's probablythat's probably a topic for another entire podcast talks.
And I just want to wrap this up, with, question for you.
You're arguing for more affect guided thinking in, in wealth managementand with managing wealth relationships.

(01:11:20):
We establish that you are not a fan of, managing those relations
in terms of like allowing a little bit of huntingbecause that doesn't, doesn't do much good.
So what in practical terms, in your view,
would that affect guided thinkingor if a guide in management would look like.

(01:11:45):
And what does it mean?
Just just to to clarify one thing.
I mean, I also think that one day we will have kind of a more regulartype of, hunting, in, in regards to wolves.
It's just that I think that it's a little bit too soon right nowbecause, we're still at the very beginning, actually,

(01:12:08):
especially when we look at different regions of, of Europe.
Yeah.
So it's, it's not that I, that I would not be,would, would not see hunting being possible in the future.
I guess at some level, we would need to talk about it.
And on another level, of course, I think you were talking about the, the situation.

(01:12:29):
The Netherlands, for example, with, with Johnny,what we have in Germany and what is particular seems to be a problem
in the Netherlands is how to deal with problematicwhat's the ones that are habituated, to humans
and, and then of course, there's always this possibility of derogation,but getting individual permits to shoot the individual wolves

(01:12:50):
and, and in Germany at least, the, the habituated wolves that we had,they were also killed.
So that seemed to work. And I think this is something,
that that's not regular hunting,but I think it's part of wolves management somehow.
You need to deal with these kinds of situations.

(01:13:13):
Yeah, but if you need proper hunting or culling quota for hunting, in any way, I think that's the question for the future.
The population is still too unstable and and in my terms.
But but I'm not ecologist might disagree.
Effect guided thinking.
So what I mean by that, what I mean is that wolf management, but also,

(01:13:36):
large part of the scientific community, they are all about rationality.
So it's all about, discussing facts and, separating facts from fiction or fairytales.
And it's all about,
looking kind of dispassionately on this topic of wolves.

(01:13:59):
Of course, the problem is that, as we know, it's all full of emotions.
And and when you tell people now, just leave aside the emotionswhich just have a rational conversation,
you might be able to try it out, but it will always come fruit. Yeah.
And it will always disrupt your conversations. Yeah.
So you can't just kind of leave emotions on on the side.

(01:14:24):
You have to acknowledge them in some way.
Now, the the worst thing that you can do about itis that you are actually driven by these emotions.
Yeah. As Wolf managers.
And this is also kind of a certain tendency.
Now I see that, if someone has a worry or a concernthat you need to take them seriously.

(01:14:47):
Yeah, I'm taking them seriously means that you feel emotionsas being authentic and natural.
Yeah.
Something that just happens without particularism.
And when someone is worried,you have to acknowledge that and you have to support that person. Yeah.

(01:15:08):
And what that leaves out is
that in particular when it comes to wolfcoexistence, is none of these emotions are just there by themselves.
Yeah. So we all live in a societal context.
We all live with wolves.
Their affective dynamics everywhere.

(01:15:29):
And this is how our emotions, emerge and form and develop.
This is what, influences also kind of the how intense the emotional responses are.
And so we need to ask kind of what contributes to that emotion.
Why are you having now, who is contributing to it?

(01:15:53):
Is it just the wolves, or is there more going on?
And, and when we teased that out, we might also see, I mean, yeah,there is emotion or an effect management going on from all sides.
The probable sides tries to manage emotions.
The wolf management tries to do it.
The politician tried to do it.

(01:16:14):
The shepherds try to do it.
Yeah.
So we need to acknowledge just the political dimensions, of emotions.
And this is what I mean is effect guided. It's not effects driven.
So we're not just blindly following the ones who are the most concernedor the most scared, but actually we say, okay,

(01:16:35):
let's have a let's have a look at your emotionsand see what is actually at stake there.
And what contributes to it. Yeah.
And then we can have a better discussionbecause we also know what's kind of the political dimensions are.
And, and if it really needs to be that way. Yeah.

(01:16:57):
So is fear just a basis for coexistence with wolves?
Does it have to be fear?
Yeah.
If we just accept the statementsof some people that then has fear, then, there's nothing to work on.
Yeah, unless you remove the wolves.
Yeah, but the point is, we don't just have emotions.

(01:17:19):
We also deal with emotions.
So, we are not powerless.
Yeah, we can also work on them.
Then this is what I earlier, termed, emotional resilience.
So we need also to discuss as a societywhat are the emotions involved in coexistence,
what is necessary, what is perhaps also fear mongeringand what kind of resilience do we need?

(01:17:45):
Yeah.
I mentioned in the epilog of the book,this queasy feeling, for example.
Yeah.
Which is, which is not the best translation,but there is no English word for it in German.
It's, the more you make, a few more you'll make.
It's one of my favorite words.
It's it's kind of.
It's not being scared,but it's kind of the beginning of something arising. Yeah.

(01:18:09):
So you feel uncomfortable, but it's also a visceral feeling.
Yeah. So you feel it in your gut.It's a but you don't know exactly what's happening.
Yeah.
And, I was talking to, to a woman in, in eastern Germanywhere they had 25 years of work.
So, she had never seen one, you know, life.

(01:18:30):
But she described this, this one scene where she went into the woodsbefore Christmas with her husband and her two kids,
and they were trying to get a Christmas tree.
And then they came to this place with the with the trees and, they,they saw, tracks
on, on the snowy grounds, of of several woods, and of course, they didn't know how fresh the tracks were.

(01:18:54):
But suddenly something changed.
They didn't know they were still around. Is this something? Yeah.
And yeah, they just kind of grabbed the kidsand and the thought maybe save it to go back.
Yeah. And the kids also suddenly changed.And for some, that something's not quite right.
Why are we going back?
Why you're taking us up on on your arms.

(01:19:15):
Yeah. And yeah. There was nothing happenedthere. Yeah. There was probably no wolves around.
Yeah, but this was just kind of this,this little feelings that you sometimes get.
Yeah. So I call it sometimes,
and this is something that is part of coexistence revolts.
Yeah. Sometimes when you go into the woods,you feel a little bit queasy.

(01:19:37):
It happened to me. To where?
When I was, Walking in wolf territory, in the evening.
It's getting dark. Sometimes you wonder when you are in the dark forest.
Yeah.
You wonder, but then also, I had the queasy feeling when.
When I encountered, a group of wild boar. So. Yeah.

(01:19:59):
Is there's some.
There is some emotional level.
I think that we just need to be able.
Yeah.
To live withwhen we want to live with wolves or with lynx or with bears even.
Because, I mean, they theythey are always potential or at least they could be a threat.

(01:20:23):
Yeah, we know that for us humans,they wolves on a really a threat in Europe.
They are just, you know, hardly any cases at all the norm.
And in Germany, but this a feeling.
Yeah.
And and some people say we don't want to have that feeling.
Not even this small, queasy feeling.
We don't want that. We don't accept it.

(01:20:46):
But I don't think that in this current world, that this is an option.
Yeah. Because when we look at the broaderpicture, it's not just wolves returning.
Yeah.
It's also, wild boars returning to Berlin and, raccoons, returning.
And so there's so many animals who close in on us,and we have to learn to deal with them because we can't kill them all.

(01:21:13):
It's not an option.
And, you know, like, I think that anyone who lives in this city,they have a queasy feeling when they need to turn into their unlit alley
and just move somewhere as like, you know, folks living with wolvesaffects feelings and sentiments in human wolf coexistence.

(01:21:33):
Once again, go into the description of this show.
Get yourself a book you won't regret. Thorsten, thank you so much.
Congratulations on the book. And thank you for your time today.
Yeah, yeah.
Thanks for inviting me.
And, for giving me the chance to speak about the book with, reallygood questions from your side, so it's always nice to speak with you.
Always a pleasure. Thanks a lot.

All Episodes

198: Living with Wolves - The Complete Guide to Coexistence

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

24/7 News: The Latest

Therapy Gecko

The Joe Rogan Experience

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}198: Living with Wolves - The Complete Guide to Coexistence