Hollywood has unexpectedly entered the wolf hazing business. As federal wildlife managers and ranchers work to find new ways to scare wolves away from livestock operations, they’re experimenting with different audio recordings played by overhead drones. The voice of A-list actor Scarlett Johansson is one of the recordings they’ve had success with, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The recent experiment in Oregon, which was led by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, was part of a study into the use of drones as hazing tools. These drones are equipped with thermal cameras and/or spotlights, and they can broadcast pre-recorded sounds, like gunshots and fireworks, that scare away gray wolves. Apparently, the fight scene from the movie Marriage Story, starring Johansson and Adam Driver, is equally (if not more) terrifying to the predators.
“I need the wolves to respond and know that hey, humans are bad,” USDA APHIS Oregon district supervisor Paul Wolf told The Journal. He said that blasting “Thunderstruck” by AC/DC has also worked well at deterring wolves in cattle country.
Wolf was one of the lead authors of a 2022 study, which focused on wolf conflict prevention in southwestern Oregon’s Klamath Basin. Because gray wolves remain federally listed in western Oregon (even though they’re delisted in the rest of the state), cattle ranchers and wildlife managers there are required by law to use non-lethal conflict management tools like fladry, fox lights, and range riders.
The 2022 study led by Wolf and others tried to gauge the effectiveness of drones as another potential hazing tool. They say the initial results were “promising.”
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During the days leading up to the drone experiment, wolves in the study area had killed 11 cows in just 20 days. After bringing in drones, the research team was able to bring that down to two depredations in 85 days. The team found that drones without additional audio were mostly ineffective, but that if a pilot yelled at the wolves through the drone’s speaker, the predators would typically retreat. They found this to be effective even when wolves were actively harassing or attacking cattle.
“From our limited anecdotal evidence,” the authors concluded, “the human voice appears to be the strongest audio deterrent of all deterrents tested (music, recorded gunshots, etc.).”
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