Adam Weymouth

The Guardian ran an interview with Hubert Potočnik, Associate Professor at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, about a wolf called Slavc who in 2011 had walked across Europe. As part of the university’s ongoing research into wolf behaviour, Hubert had collared Slavc with a GPS tracker, which sparked author Adam Weymouth’s interest.

Lone Wolf is Weymouth’s story of his 2022 walk following the young wolf’s journey over 2,000 kilometres of rough terrain from Slovenia, through Austria, across the Alps to northern Italy. This incredible story tells the unusual tale of a lone wolf ‘forging a path back into a hostile Europe that had not known his kind for generations’, and, having crossed paths with a female wolf, repopulates the Lessinia plateau of Italy where no wolves had lived for a century. The author’s mission was to stay ‘faithful to his path as best I can…by echoing his journey to see the continent a little more as he did’.

Weymouth observes, ‘there was a time when the wolf was the most widespread terrestrial mammal on the planet…And yet, almost without exception, the crusade against them has been merciless. As soon as humans became herders, the wolf was cast as thief’. With the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, one unexpected consequence was that it enabled the large carnivores of Eastern Europe to expand into the West. Following the Rio ‘Earth Summit’ in 1992, the Habitats Directive, which the European Community signed, listed the wolf alongside other large carnivores as a species of interest that required special protection. Today, only five European countries are without wolves, the United Kingdom being one.

The author, throughout, revels in the pleasure of his walk: ‘I am invigorated, blasted alive, fairly made of wind’. Of his time walking the Dolomites in Italy, he muses, ‘I have a heady sense of freedom…it is not dissimilar to Wales. Sheep and the bells of sheep. The mountain herbs, mint and rosemary and marjoram, shiver out their scents’. Weymouth’s astute observations on the changing way of life come from interviewing farmers who speak about the old days with longing, refusing to acknowledge that climate change, economic loss of subsidies and the young moving away from subsistence-level jobs have brought rural devastation. Weymouth’s walk focusses on interaction with the communities who are living alongside the wolf and how they are coping with its presence.

Throughout the rural farming community, Weymouth finds similar views expressed. In Ajdovščina, he is told that ‘hunting is falling out of fashion’ but that wolves are a big problem for farmers, and he meets a man in Cerkno whose personal crusade is to eradicate wolves from the area. Farms are closing, and ‘people are leaving. The villages become old and empty. The last thing we need here is beasts’, referring to the wolves. The traditional way of life is under threat, and many see the reintroduction of wolves as the culprit. Marko, a sheep farmer, remarks, 'The wolf is owned by the state, but the state says it is my fault because I do not protect my sheep. These guys from Ljubljana tell us how the farmer and the wolf will live together…but they do this from behind the computer'. Stall’s mayor, Peter Ebner, comments 'It is unimaginable, our great-grandfathers exterminated the wolf a hundred years ago because it was taking their food. And now we can’t do anything!’. Referring to the EU’s legally imposed Habitats Directive, 'The wolf has no place with us…we in our small country don’t need it'. Confronted by anger and frustration, Weymouth struggles to remain impartial, 'I’m not here to support the wolf; I’m here to listen. I don’t want to take sides' but he is treated with suspicion, 'by doing your walk, don’t you think you will make more people like this wolf?'

Weymouth’s meticulous research highlights some deeply worrying facts and figures: ‘Only one quarter of Europeans now live in the countryside, and across the EU a rural area the size of Italy will be abandoned by 2030’. Similarly, economic migration is seen as a problem: ‘They are changing our way of life’, with people worrying that their traditions are disappearing. ‘The shadow cast by both wolves and refugees in these rural regions is huge’, Weymouth observes. Although wolves do occasionally kill people, research data suggests that despite wolves being reintroduced throughout Europe, only six fatalities have been registered in the past century, whereas in 2023, there were sixteen fatal dog attacks in the UK alone. The author reflects, ‘I am still finding it hard to comprehend the sheer outrage that the wolf’s return provokes’. With dramatic changes happening across the Alps, including migration, depopulation, melting glaciers and dying forests, Weymouth documents that people just want it all to stop. ‘The return of the wolf is not going back to anything. We are all plunging forward into an uncharted world, and the only fantasy is that we can stop it’, he concludes.

In Lessinia, where Slavc’s journey ended, sheep farmer Mattia lives alongside the wolves, 'We are guests. If you make the choice to work in nature, you can’t complain about nature'. At the end of Lone Wolf, Weymouth sums up his epic journey, ‘For the wolf, this is clearly a time of hope… that we have opened our doors to what was once the most vilified of creatures and permitted it to forge new lives in old lands’.