On freezing winter nights, with enough patience and a little luck, it is possible to hear a deep and haunting call, a sound that comes from the dawn of time. It is the howl of the supreme predator of Italy's woodlands, the wolf (Canis lupus italicus). There are around a thousand wolves in Italy today, a remarkable achievement when one considers that the species had come close to extinction — it is estimated that in the mid-1970s only a hundred individuals survived.

Partly thanks to protective legislation, such as the Marcora decree of 1976, which established full protection and a total hunting ban, the wolf is reclaiming the spaces that had been taken from it, returning to old hunting grounds and spreading into new areas as well, by virtue of its extraordinary adaptability. Contributing decisively to the wolf's return — despite the legends claiming that wolves were parachuted in by helicopter by environmentalists — has been the depopulation of mountain and foothill areas by humans. This exodus allowed nature to flourish once more and wild animals to proliferate. Wild boar, roe deer, fallow deer and red deer have returned in great numbers, and with them the wolves that feed on these ungulates, reclaiming their position at the top of the food chain.

Until a few decades ago, wolves attracted little sympathy and were regarded as ferocious, pest-like beasts, despite there being no recorded attacks on humans. Until the last century, the figure of the "luparo" — a hunter who killed wolves for a living and then hung their carcasses at the entrance to villages to be rewarded by the inhabitants — was still active. Even environmentalists and forest rangers encouraged hunting them. Even the Parco Nazionale d'Abruzzo, the first stronghold of Italian nature, incentivised their elimination.

Today there are two main threats to the wolf: poaching and the phenomenon of hybridisation caused by stray dogs. The wolf's return has been a source of frustration above all for livestock farmers, unaccustomed to the presence of the predator, who see the survival of their animals under threat. Attacks on sheep, goats and horses are numerous, and farmers complain of slow and inadequate compensation. The situation has become so inflamed that poaching has found fertile ground: poisoned bait and wire snares are spreading ever more widely, pushing the situation back half a century. One need only think of the decapitated and impaled wolves found recently in Tuscany as an act of retaliation. The hybridisation phenomenon is equally worrying: stray dogs mating with wolves are altering the species' genetic heritage and could in future undermine its survival. In our country the problem of stray dogs is far more widespread than in other European states. Data released by the Ministry of Health speak of 600,000 stray dogs, though the true figure is feared to be at least double that, taking into account poorly supervised owner-kept dogs as well.

Once before, this magnificent and mysterious predator — painted as the embodiment of absolute evil — came close to disappearing; today the protective laws exist but are not enforced. Also in light of its important ecological role, we cannot afford to lose the wolf, and we can only hope that its howl will continue to echo through the night for a long time to come.