USDA Weaponizes Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson's 'Marriage Story' Fight to Scare Wolves

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Noah Baumbach wanted to challenge audiences with Marriage Story, making them sit in the discomfort and tension of a relationship falling apart. He probably didn’t know that his audience was going to be wolves, though. According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, the famous fight scene between Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson from Baumbach’s award-winning drama is just one tool the United States Department of Agriculture has started to use in an effort to scare the growing wolf (and hungry) population in Yellowstone National Park.

Here’s the deal: After Yellowstone opened in the late 1800s, ranchers near the park started complaining that the wolf population was feasting on their cattle. Viewed as a threat to the food supply and humans, the US Fish and Wildlife Service set out to cull the population, and it effectively drove gray wolves into local extinction and ultimately ended up on the endangered species list. From the 1920s on, wolves were rarely seen in the park or its surrounding areas. That was, as it turns out, not great. The elk population skyrocketed as a result. Coyotes thrived in their absence, too, which did major damage to the antelope population.

So in 1995, armed with decades of data and a significantly better understanding of natural predator-prey ecology, an effort was finally made to reintroduce the wolves to the park. That has gone great, both for the parks and the wolves. It has restored balance to the ecosystem, and there have been some incredible cascading effects, like the first bloom of a new generation of aspen trees in over 80 years and a major resurgence of beavers, which had been pushed to the brink of vanishing from the park.

The wolves have done so well, in fact, that we’re back to the starting point of this whole cycle. Ranchers are once again frustrated by the gray wolves doing a number on their cattle. Because the wolves are still considered an endangered species, the farmers can’t kill them. So the USDA has opted to employ some novel techniques with the aim of scaring the wolves away.

That includes using drones armed with speakers to blare loud noises. On the playlist, per the Wall Street Journal, is AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck,” the sounds of fireworks and gunshots, and the aforementioned argument from Marriage Story. “I need the wolves to respond and know that, hey, humans are bad,” Paul Wolf, a USDA district supervisor in Oregon, told the outlet.

It works… as long as the wolves don’t get their paws on the drones. According to WSJ, the drones were deployed in southern Oregon after 11 cows were taken down by wolves over a 20-day period. Just two were killed over the next 85 with the drones on patrol. But the wolves have also been seen play-bowing to the drones and, when the drones go down, the wolves tear them up. Maybe they’re just big fans of Adam Driver.

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