It was George Bernard Shaw who said, “If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.” Many pretend to have truth as to why settlers all across America and around the world went out of their way to kill wolves. Not intending to discuss those reasons, the fact remains that wolves were killed by the people and rational thinking leads us to believe it was for good reasons…..mostly.

But we have failed miserably as a society, “incapable” of “learning from experience” and thus a handful of “True Believers” insist on recreating history and the misery endured by the people of decades ago by protecting wolves and large predators, seemingly at the cost of human life.

In reading an article this morning in the AOL Travel section in the United Kingdom, it seriously took on the image of reading history from the adventures of settlers moving into the landscape of the West, except in reverse.

Due to circumstances in the Tuscany region, wolves are being forced into populated areas, where the food is. As a result, livestock and pets are being killed and attacks on humans are imminent. Once again I am reminded of Dr. Valerius Geist’s seven stages of when wolves become dangerous to humans. We must learn.

According to the report, heavy snows and cold have driven the prey base of the wolves to lower elevations. This of course being the living habitat of humans. As a result…..disaster!

Perhaps the words of Conservation biologist Claudio Sillero at the University of Oxford say it best:

There are wild wolves galore in Europe.

‘They have recolonized vast areas of their former range and live almost unnoticed in populated areas.’

‘While we think of wolves as masters of the wilderness in Europe, they thrive in human-dominated landscapes.