[Darkwolf]

We had an incident a few years ago in BC. A small pack of wolves on one of the gulf Islands near Vancouver Island were habituated by kayakers and hikers to the point where they were taking hot dogs offered from people's hands. Surprise, surprise, when one comes along and takes a curious bite out of a sleeping camper's scalp. The Wardens show up and shoot the small pack, to the outcries of all our weekend nature experts, and people wonder what happened?

there is strong evidence that similar circumstances happened in Saskatchewan. That the resource exploration company that the kid worked at was dumping garbage nearby and accustoming wildlife to come and feed there, and that the kid, along with most of the staff had no familiarity with animal behaviour and may have provoked an attack by running from the wolves when he encountered them. Since then, the company has been training it's personnel in wilderness and wildlife safety techniques.

A lot of this behaviour seems to be following the familiar pattern of other rising predator encounters around North America. Increasing incursion into wild ares by development and recreational users in larger numbers, causing an increase in wildlife encouinters, and habituation by large animals to humans.

It's that old problem they always had in the large national parks with people feeding wildlife and then somebody gets hauled out of his station wagon while feeding a grizzly bear. Now, with more areas closed to hunting and more people running into large wildlife, the odds go up that predators with no reason to fear people, and that associate them with food, are going to create problems....

Still, you have better odds encountering a wild wolf than a domestic dog....