Wolves (Canis lupus italicus) in Italy came close to disappearing for ever, victims of an archaic worldview that cast them as sworn enemies of humankind and therefore to be killed without scruple. They were forced to retreat to the harshest and most inaccessible areas of the Apennines, but today, thanks to protective measures, an increase in prey and the depopulation of foothill areas, wolves have returned to populate the peninsula.

And yet the return of the predator that is both most loved and most feared has given rise to new cases of intolerance and conflict. Since 2013, according to data from Legambiente, no fewer than 115 wolves have been found dead from unnatural causes. Over 40 per cent of the animals were killed by firearms, some were poisoned or caught in snares, while the remaining 45.6 per cent of deaths were caused by road collisions.

"It is a genuine persecution, fuelled by a web of false beliefs and prejudices, against one of the most important species in our wildlife," reads Legambiente's statement. As if the illegal killings were not enough, there are those who propose reopening the hunting of wolves in order to control their population.

In the Alps, despite the small number of individuals (around 150), the wolf is considered a threat to livestock. The Unione Zoologica italiana, on behalf of the Ministry of the Environment, is therefore studying a plan to reduce conflict between these predators and livestock farmers. Approval of the plan, which provides for a derogation from the European directive protecting the wolf, will then be up to the Ministry of the Environment and the regions involved.

The project was presented on 21 January in Cuneo, at the conference "La popolazione di lupo sulle Alpi: status e gestione", organised as part of Life WolfAlps, a European wolf research project, in collaboration with the Ministry of the Environment, the Delegation of the Alpine Convention and Alparc.

The actual content of the plan is not yet clear — only a draft has been presented — and in any case it is not possible to set a "culling" figure based on percentage calculations, given that the number of wolves is low. Any potential culling will therefore be assessed on a case-by-case basis and, if the plan were approved, wolves deemed "guilty" of aggression towards flocks or domestic animals could be killed, where all other defensive measures have proved ineffective.

On the one hand, the involvement of Luigi Boitani, holder of the chair in Conservation Biology and Animal Ecology at the University La Sapienza of Rome, a true authority on wolves, may offer some guarantee; on the other, there is a strong fear that this proposal could be interpreted arbitrarily, potentially opening the floodgates to a new persecution of these magnificent and elusive creatures. Hunting, as the conflict with other species bears out, is never a solution.

The Wwf has also expressed its opposition to the possibility of reopening wolf hunting. "Although the national wolf population may be recovering rapidly, there are still no scientifically robust data on the distribution and abundance of the carnivore in Italy that demonstrate it has attained a genuinely favourable condition in the long term," reads the Wwf's statement. "It has recently been confirmed that in the Alps the wolf is still far from being out of danger."