This quickly became a problem, at least for some people. Mieczysław Kacprzak, a member of parliament from Poland's PSL party, currently a member of the ruling coalition, addressed parliament in December 2017, saying that wolves were roaming the roads and streets of the suburbs and terrorizing citizens – in his view a tragedy waiting to happen. He also said children were afraid to go to school because of wolves and asked for support from the Ministry of Agriculture, which could lift the hunting ban. An article in 'Łowczy Polski', a magazine of the Polish hunting community with a title that translates as 'The Polish Hunter', later supported these pro-hunting arguments, claiming that wolves posed a threat to humans, especially children.
The idea was that, in the absence of hunting, wolves no longer saw humans as a threat and felt encouraged to approach them. But it was an idea largely supported by anecdote. “We found that this was not the case,” says Liana Zanette, a biologist at Wester University and co-author of the study.
Super predators
To find out whether wolves really were no longer afraid of humans, 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 place those traps in places where we were most likely to encounter wolves,” says Zanette. “Maciej literally said 'pick this tree' or 'this intersection.'” When sensors in the traps detected an animal nearby, the system took a photo and played one of three randomly chosen sounds.
The first sound was birdsong, which the team used as a control. “We chose birds because this is a typical part of forest noise and we assumed that wolves would not find it threatening,” says Clinchy. The next sound was dogs barking. The team chose this one because a dog is another large carnivore that lives in the same ecosystem and so was expected to deter wolves. The third sound was that of people talking quietly in Polish. Zanette, Clinchy and their colleagues quantified the level of fear each sound caused in wolves by measuring how quickly they left the area when they heard it.
