IN THE SUMMER OF 2022, several researchers with USDA Wildlife Services held their breath as a drone pilot flew a large drone, equipped with a camera, toward a wolf standing in a pasture in southwestern Oregon. The team members, watching from a distance, expected the wolf to freeze or run away the minute the whirring rotors approached it. But to their disbelief, it did neither.
Instead, the wolf wagged its tail, stretched out its front legs, lowered its head and lifted its butt — a classic canine invitation to play and precisely the opposite of the response researchers were hoping for. The project, led by Paul Wolf, the Southwest Oregon District supervisor for Wildlife Services, was designed to find ways to use drones to scare wolves away from
