Want Lower Car Insurance? Get Some Wolves, According to a Recent Study

I am admittedly a long advocate for protecting wolf populations as well as other wildlife severely displaced or reduced by development or hunting. However, there now appears a type of environmental dividend for those looking for a reason to support wolf reintroduction programs: lower accidents and insurance rates. A new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that car accidents with deer decreased dramatically after the re-introduction of wolves.

The study found a decrease of 24 percent in deer/vehicle collisions after the reintroduction of a wolf population.  That is not apparently due to the just reduction of the population through a natural predator.  Dominic Parker, a natural resources economist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and co-author of the study said “When you have a major predator around, it impacts how the prey behave. Wolves use linear features of a landscape as travel corridors, like roads, pipelines and stream beds. Deer learn this and can adapt by staying away.”

The findings mirror the similar reductions from cougar populations in a 2016  study .

Since a 2008 study for the U.S. Department of Transportation found car crashes cost more than $8 billion annually, that is quite a wolf dividend.

Obviously, many argue that wolves represent a threat to cattle and other operations.  There is also a high demand by hunters for the ability to hunt wolves.

So if you want lower insurance rates, get some wolves.