Hell\u2019s bells! <\/p>\n
Researchers are preventing marauding gray wolves from mauling herds of cattle out West \u2014 by blasting tunes by Aussie rockers AC\/DC from drones.<\/p>\n
US Department of Agriculture biologists are finding that the classic rock group\u2019s hit tune \u201cThunderstruck\u201d and sounds from Hollywood flicks can leave the wolves shaking all night long \u2014 and away from valuable livestock near the California and Oregon border.<\/p>\n
A USDA project to blast music and movie lines from drones is keeping hungry wolves away from herds of cattle. Michal \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n
\u201cThunderstruck\u201d by Aussie rockers AC\/DC has scared gray wolves away from livestock, the USDA said. Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cWolves are frightened of novel things,\u201d said Amaroq Weiss, a wolf advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity, to The Associated Press. \u201cI know that in the human imagination, people think of wolves as big, scary critters that are scared of nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not so, the researchers found \u2014 and it\u2019s not just Angus Young\u2019s riffs that shoo the wolves away.<\/p>\n
Other tunes, human voices and clips of Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver from the 2019 hit film, \u201cMarriage Story,\u201d have the wolves fleeing in fear.<\/p>\n
Night drones keep tabs on cattle in the US Northwest and spook away predatory wolves. AP<\/p>\n
Once hunted nearly to extinction, gray wolves have been returning in large numbers to the Northern Rockies, Idaho and Yellowstone National Park thanks to conservation efforts, taking them off the endangered list since the mid-1990s.<\/p>\n
One researcher recounted how a wolf was merely curious of a drone that hovered near it, until the operators yelled into the speaker, \u201cHey wolf, get out of here!\u201d which scared the animal away.<\/p>\n
The wolves\u2019 return has created problems for cattle ranchers, who tried everything from electric fences to guard dogs and horseback patrols to protect their herds \u2014 none proving very effective.<\/p>\n
In 2022 alone, gray wolves killed about 800 domesticated animals across 10 states.<\/p>\n
Enter the drones, which have, so far, kept the four-legged hunters at bay.<\/p>\n
AC\/DC has proven it can sell records and sell out arenas \u2014 but gray wolves want nothing to do with their music. ZUMAPRESS.com<\/p>\n
Once nearly extinct, gray wolves now roam in packs across parts of the US \u2014 a headache for cattle rangers out West. Monikasurzin \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m very appreciative of what they did,\u201d cattle rancher Mary Rickert said of the USDA effort featuring the blasts by AC\/DC, whose tunes include \u201cHells Bells.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cBut I don\u2019t think it\u2019s a long-term solution,\u201d she said. \u201cWhat I\u2019m afraid of is that after some period of time, that all of a sudden [the wolves will] go, \u2018Wow, this isn\u2019t going to hurt me. It just makes a lot of noise.\u2019 \u201c<\/p>\n
The researchers concede it is possible that the wolves will wise up and ignore the noise and acknowledge that the deed is not dirt cheap \u2014 with the drones costing about $20,000 each, not counting the price of training and employing pilots to run the operation.<\/p>\n
The drones are also less effective in wooded areas, the terrain for many ranches.<\/p>\n
But \u201cif we could reduce those negative impacts of wolves, that is going to be more likely to lead to a situation where we have coexistence,\u201d researcher Dustin Ranglack said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hell\u2019s bells! Researchers are preventing marauding gray wolves from mauling herds of cattle out West \u2014 by blasting…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":190353,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[3425,5755,57329,1183,159,67,132,68,1154,7168,837],"class_list":{"0":"post-190352","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-animals","9":"tag-drones","10":"tag-livestock","11":"tag-research","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us","16":"tag-us-news","17":"tag-usda","18":"tag-wildlife"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115126201404739594","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190352\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}