The zoologist, considered the father of modern ecology, in 1972 was the only one who managed to capture a specimen: It is foolish to say that we set them free
One man wolf. Yes, perhaps Plautus was right. But Luigi Boitani updates the Latin playwright’s maxim: I could entertain her for the next two hours and in the end she wouldn’t know if I talked about the man or the wolf, so our destinies are crossed. The truth is that men and wolves are the same. The zoologist has devoted 50 years of his life to studying how to defend the latter from the former. he is considered the greatest expert on these canids in the Old Continent: in 1972 he was the first to capture one. For a quarter of a century he has presided over the Large carnivore initiative for Europe, which brings together 58 scientists from 35 countries. After graduating in biological sciences, Boitani grew up in Yale, at the school of George Evelyn Hutchinson, the greatest scholar of conservation of all species, considered the father of modern ecology. He knows every secret of the 3,300 wolves that roam Italy: Ispra’s estimate, updated to June 2022. Never before seen such an expansion. In the chair since 1987, Boitani chaired the last exam session in animal ecology and conservation biology at Sapienza in Rome a few months ago. Now retired, to the extent that a specialist who has coordinated the management plans of over 30 national parks, from the Maiella in Italy to the Queen Elizabeth in Uganda, to the Akakus park in Libya can be: only Gaddafi’s signature was missing, but they killed him. He found his retreat in the province of Siena, not far from San Galgano, the ancient Gothic-Cistercian abbey without a roof. At 300 meters there is a den of wolves.
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If you choose them as neighbors.
I got there first. They were attracted to deer, fallow deer, roe deer and wild boar.
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How does familiarity with wolves arise?
By chance. I graduated with a thesis on entomology, on dragonflies. In 1972, back from Yale, I wanted to study the goats on the island of Montecristo, in the Tyrrhenian Sea. But I received a phone call from Fulco Pratesi, founder of WWF Italy: “We would like to know more about the wolf. Do you feel it? “.
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And since he felt it, what did he do?
I started touring central and southern Italy, collecting data and testimonies. It was the first research of its kind in Europe. But to understand more it was necessary to capture some specimens. I called David Mech, who was studying the last remaining wolf colony in Minnesota. In other states of America, apart from Alaska, they were extinct. Mech arrived with harmless traps and radio collars. We are still best friends. He will soon be celebrating his 85th birthday.
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How many wolves did you catch?
Two. Then I continued the hunt with the help of Erik Zimen, a Swede who had been a pupil of the ethologist Konrad Lorenz.
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What do radio collars prove?
That wolves do not come down to the cities in winter. They are behind our houses in every season, we just don’t see them. When the young specimens leave the herd, they go in search of a territory, a partner and a meal. Which, as we have shown, they find on the Navigli in Milan, on the Turin hill where Gianni Agnelli lived, in the San Lorenzo district in Florence, in the historic centers of Mantua and Ferrara, in the Po Delta, in Vejo, in Otranto, up to Santa Maria di Leuca. Recently at the gates of Verona, in San Giovanni Lupatoto, which coincidentally has a wolf in the municipal coat of arms.
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From 1921 this species seemed extinct.
Not so. There has always been on the Apennines. Except that from here it spread to the Alps. The first pair of wolves appeared on the Col di Tenda in the Ligurian Alps 30 years ago.
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So they weren’t reintroduced by man, as you hear around?
The greatest idiocy that has ever been told. A young wolf can travel 1,500 kilometers in a month.
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So what is the Life Wolfalps Eu for?
Only to improve coexistence with humans in places where the wolf arrives alone on its paws. An ancient art that certainly does not need to be taught to shepherds from Abruzzo, Irpinia and Calabria.
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But to those from Veneto, s.
To defend the flocks from wolves, a particular animal husbandry is needed, made up of a maximum of 600 heads. In Abruzzo we talk about morra: it means 300 sheep, a shepherd and three Maremma dogs. The losses are thus reduced to a minimum. When the damage became intolerable, the wolves intervened in the winter and killed a few too many specimens.
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Instead today?
We have arrived at the absurdity that in France, where there are just 600 wolves, 7,511 predations per year have been counted, against 1,739 in Italy, which after the Carpathians is the territory where the most specimens are estimated. the result of modern animal husbandry. But you don’t defend a flock of 4,000 sheep even with 50 dogs.
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Are they calling you to explain these things?
I have worked well with the Piedmont Region for ten years. For the rest, only one intervention in Valle d’Aosta and two conferences in Veneto, in Lessinia.
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How do you detect the presence of wolves?
With camera traps and the collection of footprints, tufts of fur and excrement along the paths. Between July and September even with howls: if I scream, the little ones, who are fools, answer me.
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Does the wolf have a favorite habitat?
No, the most adaptable and opportunistic animal on the face of the earth. It is found everywhere, from the North Pole to the Saudi Arabian desert, except in tropical forests. I spent 45 days in Ellesmere, the northernmost of the Canadian Arctic islands, along with a pack of huge, beautiful white wolves. They are not afraid of man, I followed them two meters away. I fully understood their psychology.
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And which one?
They play, they play, they always play, even though they are immersed in the polar night for six months of the year, at minus 50 degrees.
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Was it the only close encounter?
Well, no. I had many others in the Maiella National Park and, recently, under the house, 30 meters away: four adult wolves with six young. They fled immediately.
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Does the wolf run away in front of the man?
All time. I do not know of a case of aggression in Italy and, abroad, only that of Candice Berner, mauled in 2010 in a small Alaskan village.
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How can this tragedy be explained?
He was jogging and had iPod headphones on, he didn’t notice the wolves coming. Running means prey. But it was the first time in the US in 50 years.
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Near my house, in Camposilvano, in 1655 a wolf slaughtered a housewife who was standing washing clothes in a puddle. There is a stone cross near the Buse di Sotto district to remember it.
Anger was endemic at the time. Hydrophobic animals always attack humans, even weasels do. The essays of two historians reconstruct all these deaths from the parish registers. From the fifteenth to the nineteenth century, wolves caused 77 victims in Italy, of which five from rabies contagion. No attacks have been reported in the past 100 years.
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So she’s not afraid of wolves?
Only for Ashi, the eighth dog of my life, a Mnsterlnder puppy who could become prey.
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What to do if you come across a wolf?
Stand still, quiet and enjoy the show, which unfortunately lasts a few seconds. If you really get scared, just raise your arms and the wolf disappears. In short, not like the encounter with the bear, for which it is recommended to retreat slowly and not gesticulate.
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How many puppies does a she-wolf give birth?
Three to ten, once a year, but not all survive.
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Can it be prevented from proliferating too much?
It is not necessary. A herd controls from 80 to 500 square kilometers, on average 300. This means that peninsular Italy is already saturated. The wolf finds territories still to be colonized only in the Alps.
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Go and tell shepherds and breeders.
Dogs and electric fences are enough to defend the livestock. But the mountain people must understand that they cannot leave flocks and herds in the open at night to go down to the valley to their wives. However, there are indemnities. Years ago I ascertained that each sheep received EU subsidies equal to 60 per cent of its value. So, if it was torn to pieces by a wolf, the Regions would only have to reimburse the remaining 40 percent. But this the shepherds always omitted to say.
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Will we get to take down the wolves?
I can admit that localized exemptions are granted. But only by the state. a protected species. Kill them offense.
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What is the worst danger for the wolf?
Hybridization. Already 40 years ago, for every 2-4 wolves present on 100 square kilometers, there were 150-310 wandering dogs and 24-82 wild dogs. I received a terrible video shot in the Tarvisio forest: it shows a whole herd of hybrids.
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I met Mario Messi. He purposely hybridized them with the Italian wolf protection body.
A madness. I fought this gentleman. I went to a hearing in Parliament. He wanted a law to get money from the state. She tried to give me one of his bastard wolves. I replied that for 10,000 years the dog is enough for man.
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Did you then do the research in Montecristo?
No. But those are just any capraces, they are in no danger.
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An animal rights activist doesn’t talk like that.
But I’m not an animal rights activist. I don’t put the individual first. I care that species survive.
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And how many are there?
In Italy 57,000. In the world 1.7 million those described, but it is estimated that they reach ten times as much. And today we are in the sixth mass extinction.
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Who will be saved?
After the disappearance of the man? The ant. And after the ant, the wolf.
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August 12, 2022 (change August 12, 2022 | 22:47)
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