crowds of picnicking Italians, so it was 
sensible on the wolves’ part to keep 
out of the way. Sometimes we actually 
had the impression that they withdrew 
higher up the mountainside early on 
Sunday mornings, as if they knew the 
picnickers’ invasion was imminent, but 
that could have been chance. 
When darkness fell the wolves 
emerged from their refuge areas and 
set out on roamings that took them 
from one place where food might pos- 
sibly be found to another. First, they 
might go to a refuse pit, then a village, 
then a sheep shed, then another refuse 
pit. In the morning they withdrew 
again, often to the place where they 
had spent the previous day. This was 
the time of day when we were most 
likely to see them. In the evening they 
nearly always waited until it was dark 
before coming down, but in the morn- 
ing they often stayed below until the 
first peasants appeared in the fields. 
Thus they adapted themselves to a 
large extent to the rhythm of human 
activity, which generally lags a few 
hours behind the state of the sun. 
Sometimes the wolves would be late 
in returning to the mountains from 
areas of human habitation. In that 
case some wolves would stay in a hid- 
ing place all day long and not move 
on until darkness fell. For example, 
wolf 1 / 2 (the first male we captured, 
marked with a “1” in the left ear 
and a “2” in the right ear) occasionally 
spent the day in a small woods below 
a village, not a hundred yards from 
the nearest house. On the other hand, 
wolf 9/10, a female in the Maiella 
region, made great detours in order 
to return to her daytime resting site, 
the steep rocky slopes at the foot of 
the Maiella above Santa Eufemia. 
The wolves seemed to have an ex- 
cellent knowledge of human habits. 
Although food was to be found only 
in the neighborhood of humans, the 
wolves avoided contact with human 
beings as much as possible. In sum- 
mer, they hardly ever used tarred 
roads but made good use of tracks 
and paths. In winter, roads that had 
Red deer from Yugoslavia and 
Bavaria were released into the Parco 
Nazionale d’Abruzzo in the 1970s. 
The aim is to wean the wolves from 
their dependence on humans for food 
by reintroducing their natural prey. 
been cleared of snow were their fa- 
vorite routes. Open, unwooded country 
where the wolves were likely to come 
across human beings was avoided in 
the daytime but used at night or very 
early in the morning. This applied par- 
ticularly to the summer months, when 
human activity in such areas was 
much greater than in winter. 
I had an interesting experience with 
wolf 5/6, a young female in the na- 
tional park. She was definitely a 
“refuse-pit wolf,” and her favorite 
daytime resting place was at a steep 
spot above the Pescasseroli refuse 
dump. One summer evening in 1974 
I followed her from the refuse pit to 
the ruins of a big hotel above Pes- 
casseroli. The village lay beneath us. 
I took care not to approach too closely 
in the car. In the village everything 
was quiet, except that music was still 
coming from Pepe’s bar. The she-wolf 
remained above among the ruins. Only 
when the light went out at Pepe’s did 
she come down into the village. I could 
not believe my eyes, but she went right 
on through the sleeping village. While 
dogs howled frantically all over the 
place, she crossed the village square 
and went right down the main street 
and past the national park headquar- 
ters before making off in a southerly 
direction. 
In spite of such behavior, few people 
in the Abruzzi have ever seen a wolf. 
Wolves are occasionally surprised by 
headlights on the main road, but for 
the most part they are only seen spo- 
radically, by game wardens, forest po- 
lice, and, of course, shepherds. Even 
we, who tracked them so closely, saw 
them relatively rarely. My wife, Dag- 
mar, had been in the Abruzzi for a 
long time before she saw her first wild 
wolf, between the tennis courts and 
the empty swimming pool in the mid- 
dle of Campo di Giove. In this instance 
we had tracked 7/8, an old she-wolf, 
right into the village. When the signal 
suddenly became very loud, I switched 
on our big spotlight and soon caught 
her in its beam. As was quite normal, 
she took no notice of the light. Head- 
lights obviously did not mean danger 
to wolves, since we watched them for 
hours at refuse dumps in the beam 
of our headlights without their seem- 
ing to take any notice. At Campo di 
Giove the she-wolf 7/8 was looking 
for something to eat. Down in the 
valley a passenger train slowly worked 
its way up the mountain from 
Cansano, and the illuminated car- 
riages clattered noisily by. The she- 
wolf was directly below by the rails, 
but she did not even look up at the 
passing train. Dagmar saw her second 
wolf at the Caramanico refuse pit. 
In this case a fox and a cat were 
present in addition to the wolf, and 
as one might expect, the cat kept its 
distance from the fox and the fox kept 
its distance from the wolf. The next 
morning we found that the animals 
had been eating a big load of slaugh- 
■ano Cappelli World Wildlife Fund 
71 
