Speaking at the Oxford Literary Festival, rewilding campaigner Derek Gow claimed the portrayal of wild creatures as ‘terrifying’ is false. More people are killed by pet dogs than by wolves.
This checks out. There are more people with pet dogs and also there are no wolves in the UK, so it’s not surprising data. Plus, we tend to keep pets nearer to us, so if they kick off you’ll know about it.
The key issue here is that it’s not an “either/or” situation. A study found that “some” people would be killed by wolves if we had them but far fewer than by dangerous dogs. But those deaths would just add together. Dogs wouldn't let more people live when they find out there’s another animal doing some of their work.
Derek claims we need to control deer numbers and wolves would do it. They’d also control some livestock numbers, which is bad news for the farmers and not great for the sheep.
Derek said, “People say, ‘Oh, we have to kill more, we have to eat more venison,’ but it hasn’t happened so far. We’re not very good deer hunters.”
He’s right. We Brits aren’t good deer hunters. We need to get some Americans in. Although they would probably kill more Brits than dogs.
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