tional park area. The animal had ob- 
viously been killed with a shotgun by 
a poacher who had been shooting 
birds. It must have taken some time 
to die. Its body was carried along by 
the stream and finally ended up in 
the undergrowth by the bank where, 
guided by the transmitter, we even- 
tually found it. 
Other wolves marked by us also died 
at the hands of humans. At the very 
beginning of our work in the Maiella 
area we caught and tagged two adult 
females from neighboring packs. At 
least four other wolves, presumably 
an adult male and three cubs, were 
living with one of these females (7/8). 
The female had cubs again in the 
spring in a thick woods on the Cresta 
Maggiore above Cansano. Luigi found 
the den and saw two cubs, although 
there may have been more. This den 
was the rendezvous for the pack 
throughout the summer. In the winter 
that followed I succeeded in catching 
and tagging two adult males and two 
nine-month-old cubs, so that there 
were four members of the pack we 
could keep track of. Together these 
wolves roamed an area of about sev- 
enty-five square miles between Sul- 
mona, the Passo San Leonardo, and 
Pescocostanzo. It was not long, how- 
ever, before we found one of the cubs 
dead: it had swallowed strychnine hid- 
den in the carcass of a sheep. And 
one of the adult males died soon after, 
also of strychnine poisoning. 
Of the total of twenty-five wolves 
that we knew had died in the Abruzzi 
from 1974 to 1976, at least nine, 
chiefly young ones, died of poison. 
Three died of gunshot wounds and 
one was run over. For the others the 
cause of death could not be estab- 
lished. We have no information about 
wolves that die of natural causes — 
illness, old age, wounds, or undernour- 
ishment. But since of an estimated 
total of twenty-five wolves at least thir- 
teen, and probably more, were killed 
in the course of two years, the chances 
of natural death cannot be very high. 
Because of the wolf ’s secretive way 
of living, we were not able to obtain 
an accurate picture of the nature of 
the population, that is, its age struc- 
ture, the size of its social groups, its 
rates of reproduction, and so on. Ob- 
servation of 7/8 and her pack showed 
that wolves in this area were able to 
form small packs, which remained sta- 
ble for a time, and to lay claim to 
a territory that was defended against 
strange conspecifics. But the high 
death rate due to human agency, as 
well as living conditions that are 
greatly dependent on human beings, 
affects the spatial organization of the 
population, and such packs do not sur- 
vive for long. The large amount of 
food required by young animals and 
the consequent increased pressure on 
domestic animals (when cubs are pres- 
ent) result in an increase in human 
persecution when a pack has been 
formed. The result is a surviving wolf 
population largely split up into small 
groups or individual animals that gen- 
erally live on refuse and are able to 
reproduce and rear cubs successfully 
only in exceptionally favorable cir- 
cumstances. 
Our work in the Abruzzi showed 
very plainly the demands that the wolf 
makes on the living space it shares 
with humans. Apart from a sufficient 
food supply, a matter on which it is 
not exactly choosy, the wolf needs ref- 
uge areas that are to a large extent 
free of human disturbance. These can 
be either undeveloped forest areas or 
mountainous regions with forests and 
steep ravines. In any case, in the Ital- 
ian distribution area we found no re- 
gion where woods or mountains were 
lacking and wolves survived. In this 
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