Wolves do not howl at the moon

After being gone for a long time, wolves are back.

But what actually do we know about them? By Luca Giunti

Wolves are native to our peninsula. They were forced to leave for sixty years, a short period in natural dynamics.

Life does not like empty spaces; it fills them up. Starting in the 1980s, from the tiny, inaccessible enclaves where they had holed up, the few surviving wolves began to look around again, walking and covering miles.

Thus, wolves have returned to our midst. What is our response to this reappearance, to this ancient and renewed presence? We are torn betwixt fascination and unease.

The wolf is like a veteran returning from a war, which we have tried to forget. Bringing back cultural memories, it ignites mysterious, ancestral and disturbing flashes in people's minds.

And wherever it returns, it always raises the same problems: damages and fears. The damage is real and present, while the fears are much less so. But we deal with them with a medieval mindset that this educational performance seeks to turn into a growth’s one.

Luca Giunti. Naturalist, ethologist, writer, journalist and photographer #sbaluf, he has been working as a park ranger in the protected areas of the Cottian Alps, in Piedmont.

He cured the preface to the reissue of Laura Conti's Discorso sulla Caccia, published by AltrEconomia, and wrote Le conseguenze del ritorno https://edizionialegre.it/notizie/nuove-conseguenze-del-ritorno/.

He also wrote columns and popular texts and delivered passionate lectures, with the purpose of dispellling deeply rooted misconceptions about animal behaviour.