Slavc (pronounced sh-lough-ts) was a wolf pioneer. Born in 2010, in southern Slovenia, at a 12 months outdated he was collared with a GPS tracker by biologists researching wolf habits. Quickly afterward he set out, alone, on a stroll of greater than a thousand miles via the Alps, looking for the identical three issues all of us need: sufficient area to dwell; sufficient meals to eat; a mate.
He crossed Slovenia, after which Austria, and 4 months later he was in Italy, within the mountains simply north of Verona. It was there that he crossed paths with a feminine on a walkabout of her personal. Probably she got here from France, though her actual provenance is unknown. Extremely, maybe the one two wild wolves for hundreds of sq. miles had one way or the other discovered one another. Once they bred, they turned the primary pack in these mountains for over a century.
Slavc’s journey was astonishing not solely in its distance however in how profitable he finally was. His pack turned the premise for the repopulation of those mountains: there are actually greater than 200 wolves within the area. For my e book, “Lone Wolf,” I walked Slavc’s path a decade after him. I wished to see how these studying to dwell alongside the wolf had been dealing with its presence. However there was extra to it than that, as a result of the return of wolves is under no circumstances the one change that’s dealing with Europe.
In 2022, after I started my stroll, the European Union’s Schengen space, supposed to facilitate free motion, was surrounded and subdivided by 1,273 miles of border fences, 19 separate constructions. In 1993, when the union fashioned after the autumn of the Iron Curtain, there have been none. At the moment, border fences felt virtually medieval, however right now a brand new politics is shaping the globe and the European Union’s inner and exterior borders are hardening by the 12 months.
Wolves have all the time had a curious means of mirroring human issues. As I walked Slavc’s path, I incessantly heard wolves and refugees spoken of in the identical breath: “I’m not in opposition to them, however there’s no room for them right here.” “We had been right here first.” Life within the Alps has all the time been onerous, however simply now issues really feel significantly acute. Local weather change; escalating costs for power and animal feed; younger individuals abandoning rural farms for the cities. Each the wolf and the refugee are getting used as scapegoats for complicated issues in these hinterlands, with native tensions infected by populist politicians chasing the agricultural vote.
