@comrade_Comrade You seriously think removing all natural predators from an eco-system would be a good solution? Don't you see any value in animal life or a varied wildlife? If everyone thought like that, I'm sure all big cats like tigers and lions would already be extinct, but I guess since they're no use to humans they don't deserve to live as far as you're concerned.
Sheep farmers already made wolves extinct here once before, and the entire eco-system took a big hit, with overpopulation among all the animals wolves previously hunted, starvation in said overpopulated animals, several plant species became endangered due to the fact that there were too many herbivores constantly eating them. You need to understand that everything has a place in this world. Wolves are a very important part of Norway's ecosystem, and if you remove them from our landscape, then every other animal and plant species would be negatively affected by it. It's incredibly naïve to think it's possible to just remove an animal species and expect there to be no disastrous concequences.
Not to mention over half of all the sheep deaths aren't even caused by predators, they're caused by accidents and diseases. If they can't or won't hire shepherds, then they shouldn't send the sheep off into Norway's dangerous and mountainous landscape alone. Keep them in a fenced off area if you refuse to take proper care of them.
Look at Britain. They made wolves extinct several hundred years ago, and now everywhere in Britain looks like a barren park with no natural-looking wild landscapes, because the herbivores have run amok with no one to control their population so they eat everything until there's only grass left.
Hell, if you need any visual proof, here's what happened to Yellowstone Park in the USA when they reintroduced wolves to the region: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysa5OBhXz-Q
Also, this is Norway, these farmers aren't poor. They actually get a ton of money from the government, they could easily afford to hire shepherds. I'm sure if they hired shepherds they would actually save a lot of money due to them protecting the sheep from injuries and disease that are easily preventable as long as there's someone watching over them. Hell, if they're so insistent on saving money, they can just buy a llama. Sheep herds where they've added a llama to the herd are barely ever attacked by wild animals, because llamas look tall and intimidating. There's a very easy solution here, but sheep farmers in this country just blindly hate wolves and want them extinct with no concern for the concequences their extinction would cause. Wolves here are already critically endangered to the point where there's only about 30 of them left (I have no idea how they can keep blaming the wolves everytime a sheep dies when there's hardly any wolves left in the entire country), and yet the government still allows these rednecks to hunt them down.
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@comrade_Comrade You seriously think removing all natural predators from an eco-system would be a good solution? Don't you see any value in animal life or a varied wildlife? If everyone thought like that, I'm sure all big cats like tigers and lions would already be extinct, but I guess since they're no use to humans they don't deserve to live as far as you're concerned.
Sheep farmers already made wolves extinct here once before, and the entire eco-system took a big hit, with overpopulation among all the animals wolves previously hunted, starvation in said overpopulated animals, several plant species became endangered due to the fact that there were too many herbivores constantly eating them. You need to understand that everything has a place in this world. Wolves are a very important part of Norway's ecosystem, and if you remove them from our landscape, then every other animal and plant species would be negatively affected by it. It's incredibly naïve to think it's possible to just remove an animal species and expect there to be no disastrous concequences.
Not to mention over half of all the sheep deaths aren't even caused by predators, they're caused by accidents and diseases. If they can't or won't hire shepherds, then they shouldn't send the sheep off into Norway's dangerous and mountainous landscape alone. Keep them in a fenced off area if you refuse to take proper care of them.
Look at Britain. They made wolves extinct several hundred years ago, and now everywhere in Britain looks like a barren park with no natural-looking wild landscapes, because the herbivores have run amok with no one to control their population so they eat everything until there's only grass left.
Hell, if you need any visual proof, here's what happened to Yellowstone Park in the USA when they reintroduced wolves to the region: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysa5OBhXz-Q
Also, this is Norway, these farmers aren't poor. They actually get a ton of money from the government, they could easily afford to hire shepherds. I'm sure if they hired shepherds they would actually save a lot of money due to them protecting the sheep from injuries and disease that are easily preventable as long as there's someone watching over them. Hell, if they're so insistent on saving money, they can just buy a llama. Sheep herds where they've added a llama to the herd are barely ever attacked by wild animals, because llamas look tall and intimidating. There's a very easy solution here, but sheep farmers in this country just blindly hate wolves and want them extinct with no concern for the concequences their extinction would cause. Wolves here are already critically endangered to the point where there's only about 30 of them left (I have no idea how they can keep blaming the wolves everytime a sheep dies when there's hardly any wolves left in the entire country), and yet the government still allows these rednecks to hunt them down.