these local flocks, big flocks from the 
plain are driven into the mountains 
where they graze from the middle of 
June to the end of October. These 
larger flocks can consist of several 
thousand animals, and they, too, are 
guarded by shepherds and dogs in the 
daytime and kept in pens at night. 
Thus there is no grazing of the kind 
practiced, say, in Scotland or the west- 
ern United States, where sheep are 
left unguarded day and night, grazing 
over wide areas. In the past fifty years 
there has been a steady decline in 
the number of sheep in the region 
and a slight increase in the number 
of cattle. In the summer the cattle 
graze freely, like sheep in Scotland. 
The human inhabitants of the 
Abruzzi live chiefly in the lower-lying 
10 : regions, in villages, small towns, and 
a few larger towns. The population 
density of the entire province is 202 
persons per square mile. At higher 
altitudes small villages lie in the foot- 
hills of the mountain ranges, at heights 
of up to 3,600 feet. Here there is 
an average of 75 persons to a square 
mile. Until the middle of this century 
there was a high rate of emigration 
from these areas, and some villages 
were completely abandoned. But in 
recent years the development of tour- 
ism has led to a movement in the 
opposite direction, and many emi- 
grants now return from Britain, the 
United States, and Australia. The big 
skiing resorts are Roccaraso and 
Pescasseroli in the national park. 
In the southern part of the Abruzzi 
there is a small population of about 
60 to 100 bears, the last in the Ap- 
ennines. The chamois has been ex- 
terminated, apart from about 500 ani- 
mals in the national park. Roe and 
red deer were also exterminated, and 
attempts to reintroduce them in the 
national park began in 1972. Wild 
boar similarly had almost completely 
disappeared, but a slow natural in- 
crease in their numbers has now be- 
gun. As far as the wolf was concerned, 
Luigi had reports of them only from 
the more densely wooded areas of the 
Maiella and the national park area, 
and it was there that we began our 
fieldwork. 
In view of the wolves’ great shyness 
and their secretive way of living, there 
was no way of studying them other 
than with the aid of telemetry. Two 
and a half years of following Abruzzi 
wolves equipped with radio transmit- 
ters showed us a way of life markedly 
different from that of their counter- 
parts in the wild in North America. 
North American wolves, which gen- 
erally travel in packs, cover great dis- 
tances in their territory, and sleep in 
a different place every day. Only dur- 
ing the cub-rearing period in summer 
are their movements star shaped, so 
to speak, to and from the place where 
the cubs are. In the Abruzzi, however, 
this star-shaped activity continues 
throughout the year. Every wolf (or 
small pack) had a few places in its 
territory to which it returned day after 
day, sometimes for weeks on end. 
These “traditional resting qreas,” as 
we called them, were in areas that 
were to a large extent inaccessible to 
human beings, on steep slopes covered 
with thick beech forest. The distance 
to the nearest village was not nec- 
essarily great, but the places were such 
that humans rarely went to them. 
In winter the wolves kept to lower 
altitudes, and in summer they went 
higher up the mountain. We also no- 
ticed that in many areas, they re- 
mained at higher altitudes on Sundays 
than they did on weekdays. Many of 
the lower-lying areas where cars could 
go were overrun on fine Sundays by 
Shepherds lose most of their sheep 
to wolves during storms and periods 
of heavy mist conditions or when the 
sheep are confined in fenced pens. 
Solitary kills are the most common, 
although occasional large kills have 
been reported. 
69 
