If I ever see a wolf, I will stand nice and still and wait for it to go away.
Maybe toss it a bone (if I have one).
I will not be encouraged to wind it the fuck up.
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The last thing I want to do is piss off a pack of apex predators.
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I certainly hope not. Teaching a wolf to associate humans with food is a good way to get the animal killed.
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So it seems like the problem is less the dyes, but the other medium that is in the paintball, mainly polyethylene glycol, glycerol, propylene glycol. None of that is toxic on its own, but the combination evidently is bad for dogs (go figure, like chocolate isn’t good for dogs either, but not toxic to humans.)
There are more exotic ones that are used in the game. They have balls that are basically compressed powder and puffs into a dust cloud. No idea if they would be less toxic. There used to be non marking ones called Perfect Circle that had water inside and used in training, but it was encapsulated in a plastic shell, not gelatin. I don’t know if they make them any more. (Gelatin can’t use water or it will swell up.) There are also a special kind called First Strike that has to be loaded in a magazine fed paintball marker, but has these little fins on it for accuracy and are a thin plastic shell. One could make those non-marking, I believe, but the problem is availability and custom made paintballs.
Maybe they could come up with a reduced ingredient ball that licking a couple off your rump won’t hurt you.
I still don’t know how big of a deterrent it will be. The zing of a paintball greatly depends on the distance you are at. They can get acclimated to noises and other tactics, they might get used to paintballs as well 
Historically in the modern era, when wolves and people mix, the wolves end up losing out.
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If anything, I’d prefer a Riddley Walker situation, with a pack of wild dogs as my friends.
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The other alternative, bean bag rounds, runs the risk of teaching wolves to hacky sack. Then they’ll start skateboarding, which you can’t do well in the woods. So they’ll move to more urban environments. Just no good solutions.
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I am surprised that the Netherlands has enough large, contiguous wild lands to support wolves. Wolves can range for miles in a single day. Are we sure they’re not talking about two-legged wolves?
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… great, now I’ve got Duran Duran stuck in my head
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A valid point.
Just so long as they don’t associate me as food.
“We have reason to believe the park owner is responsible for taming the wolves,” the Faunabescherming president, Niko Koffeman, said. “If the Hoge Veluwe has a wolf population that is behaving significantly differently from others in the Netherlands and in surrounding countries, the situation is suspicious.”
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“Over-friendly like the wolf?”
A classic!
So far, in the Netherlands, the only sightings have been solitary wolfs.
They recently made their way back via Germany, so far only in the east of the country. There’s stretches of forests and heath but it’s mostly farmland. The low human population density probably helps.
Wolves are protected, which means they cannot be killed unless there is a strong enough reason. The fact that they kill lots of sheep has not been enough of a reason, and the (privately owned) park mentioned in the story has a herd of mostly unmanaged sheep that are at risk.
There’s continuing debate about whether there is room in the Netherlands at all for such a predator, and given its preference for easy prey over wild game (deer, possibly boar) there are rising tensions between government wildlife management and sheep herders.
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is there ANYTHING that isn’t poisonous to dogs?!
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Lotta armchair wolf experts in these comments. I’m going to assume that the people who run this park know more about wolves than I do.
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I am more worried about danger posed if the huge “this should be more than enough” 500-wolf wolf pack used to make the recording gets loose…
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Vs 10,000 Maniacs in a karaoke mashup!!
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To be fair, I have never been attacked by a pack of <10k maniacs while listening to These Are The Days…
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Once wolves (or bears or whatever other smart wild animals) start learning how to get food from humans, they end up getting culled. This is why all the forest management agencies in the US try to get everyone to use bear boxes, not leave food, and certainly to not feed wild animals. Getting animals used to humans is dangerous for everyone.
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