This quickly became a problem, at least for some people. Mieczysław Kaczprzak, a lawmaker from Poland's PSL party currently in the ruling coalition, addressed parliament in December 2017, saying wolves were roaming suburban roads and streets, terrorizing citizens—a tragedy waiting to happen, he said. He also said children were afraid to go to school because of wolves, and asked for support from the Ministry of Agriculture to lift the hunting ban. An article in the journal of the Polish hunting society, Łowczy Polski, with a title that translated as “Polish Hunter”, later supported these arguments in favor of hunting, arguing that wolves pose a threat to people, especially children.
The idea was that wolves, in the absence of hunting, stopped perceiving people as a threat and felt a desire to approach them. But this idea was largely supported by anecdotes. “We found that this is not the case,” says Liana Zanette, a biologist at Western University and co-author of the study.
Super Predators
To find out whether wolves really are no longer afraid of people, Zanette, Clinchy and their colleagues set up 24 camera traps in the Tuchola forest. “Our Polish colleagues and co-authors, especially Maciej Szewczyk, helped us set traps in areas where wolves were most likely to be encountered,” says Zanette. “Maciej would literally say, “Pick this tree” or “this intersection.” When the sensors in the traps detected an animal nearby, the system took a photo and played one of three random sounds.
The first sound was birds chirping, which the team used as a control. “We chose the birds because they are a typical part of the forest soundscape and we assumed wolves wouldn't see it as a threat,” Clinchy says. The next sound was dogs barking. The team chose this option because the dog is another large predator living in the same ecosystem, so it was expected to repel wolves. The third sound is simply people speaking calmly in Polish. Zanette, Clinchy and their colleagues quantified the level of fear each sound evoked in wolves by measuring how quickly they left the area after hearing it.
