Grey wolves migrating from Southern Italy are finding their way into France and central Europe, where they had been exterminated during the XIX and the XX century. This site is intended as a tribute to the wolf and as an informational tool to help people understand that the species can live together with us in many of the natural former habitats in Italy, Spain, France, Switzerland, Austria and Germany, and particularly in the alpine range. I hope you enjoy the story, my photographs, and the historic novel I wrote concerning wolves.

In the mid morning of a sunny July day my wife and I were walking on the slopes of the Pollino mountains. We followed the lead of Norman Douglas’ book Old Calabria, and were in search of Pinus leucodermis (White-skinned pine), a living fossil from the early Cenozoic era, a formidable conifer that thrives only where other trees cannot survive.

But we also found something else: three wolves appeared at a distance of one hundred yards, briskly trotting towards us. After 35 years, I still have a distinct image of that encounter: the two adults stopping, ears alert, then immediately disappearing behind a hill brow; and the pup hesitating one second more and looking at us before vanishing in the grass.

At the time, it was estimated that the total wolf population in Italy had shrunk to no more than 100 individuals. And we had seen three of them in full daylight! Such a rare encounter drove me to dedicate myself to wildlife photography. Later I learned that the wolf is my totemic animal, as the suffix –olf of my surname testifies.