Drones Are Blasting Iconic Argument From ‘Marriage Story’ to Scare Wolves Away From Cows in Oregon

Scarlet Johansson and Adam Driver’s charged dialogue is playing from speakers attached to drones as wildlife officials get creative in their efforts to stop wolves from killing cattle

Christian Thorsberg | Daily Correspondent

August 18, 2025

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After packs of wild gray wolves killed 11 cows during a 20-day period in southern Oregon’s Klamath Basin, officials with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) have been using creative methods to scare the predators away from livestock.

Their strategy, known as wolf “hazing” in a study published in Global Ecology and Conservation last year, involves equipping remote-controlled quadcopters with thermal cameras. When wolves are seen prowling too close to cattle, the drones shine bright lights and blast loud noises in hopes of scaring them away.

“What we found is that it actually works really quite well, especially if you have a speaker attached,” Dustin Ranglack, a researcher with the USDA’s National Wildlife Research Center, told Jefferson Public Radio’s Justin Higginbottom in December. “That’s kind of the real key.”

The hazing soundboard features an eclectic mix of music and pop culture samples. Audio clips blasted over the nighttime drones’ speakers include AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck,” Five Finger Death Punch’s “Blue on Black,” gunshot and firework sound effects, and dialogue from Noah Baumbach’s 2019 film Marriage Story. In the selected scene, Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver scream vicious, emotionally charged insults at each other.

Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver in Marriage Story l Netflix

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“I need the wolves to respond and know that, hey, humans are bad,” Paul Wolf, a USDA district supervisor in Oregon, tells the Wall Street Journal’s Jim Carlton and Angela Owens.

Released in 2019, Marriage Story earned six Oscar nominations, including one for Best Picture. Johansson and Driver were also nominated for Best Actress and Best Actor, respectively. The famous verbal fight between the two lead actors remains one of the film’s most iconic scenes—though it’s unlikely the filmmakers anticipated the dramatic dialogue would one day play for an audience of wolves.

“They’ve lost their voices; they’ve lost a sense of who they are,” Baumbach told Entertainment Weekly’s Mary Sollosi shortly after the film’s release. “They’re trying to figure out what they believe anymore. And that’s a dangerous place, I think, for a couple to find themselves. It was the most difficult scene I’ve ever shot in a movie. But also the most rewarding.”

The wild gray wolf population has grown 15 percent since 2023. Still, the wolves remain protected under the Endangered Species Act in many parts of the state. As such, farmers and officials seeking to protect livestock from wolves must continue to use non-lethal measures. In a statement issued to CNN’s Alli Rosenbloom, a spokesperson says the agency is “testing various sounds as part of a research project to see what elicits the strongest responses from the wolves.”

“The particular audio from … Marriage Story was chosen to test the effectiveness of the human voice at deterring wolves, as it has both male and female voices to represent the range of different tones,” the USDA tells the Los Angeles Times’ Anthony Solorzano. “While the pilots have the ability to speak directly to the wolves through the speaker on the drone, this standard audio was chosen to control for individual differences in tone.”

So far, the unorthodox technique has proven successful. Eighty-five days after the drones were deployed, only two cows had been killed.

While progress is encouraging, officials are trying to make the wolf hazing method more sustainable. Researchers are working to overcome technological hurdles, including working around the drones’ battery lives—which are as short as 20 minutes—and the hazards of flying through the dark. In at least one instance, a $20,000 drone crashed into a tree while chasing a wolf away, damaging its thermal camera.

Christian Thorsberg | Read More

Christian Thorsberg is an environmental writer and photographer from Chicago. His work, which often centers on freshwater issues, climate change and subsistence, has appeared in Circle of Blue, Sierra magazine, Discover magazine and Alaska Sporting Journal.