Luigi Boitani Quotes

Why are there butterflies, dogs and cats? I refuse to have to justify the existence of a species.

Wolves are curious, and it's quite possible that a wolf will occasionally approach a human settlement. It doesn't happen often, but it isn't unnatural behavior, either. A situation like that can certainly become critical, and it's perfectly justifiable to intervene and show the animal that people can be dangerous. Perhaps one reason the wolf is so fearless is that human beings have taught it to acquire such behavior.

A jackal might take the odd chicken or domestic rabbit, possibly a small lamb, but it is not an animal that should give farmers a great deal of concern. [...] It’s an incredible animal, capable of widespread dispersion.

I have been studying wolves for 40 years. They are a part of my life. I always feel incredibly fortunate to encounter them in nature, as I did in the Abruzzi region a few weeks ago, when I saw two beautiful animals in a clearing. But unfortunately that happens very, very rarely. They are simply incredibly good at staying out of sight.

Wolves are very clever animals. The young learn from the older ones. You have to consider that we bred the domestic dog from the wolf. And dogs can learn anything! We don't have to shoot a few animals in every generation to preserve the natural fear of people. But you do have to make decisions on a case-by-case basis. I have no objection to shooting a wolf that's causing a lot of trouble. I'm a conservationist, but I'm not one of those wolf lovers who believe that every animal is sacred and has to be protected under all circumstances. We aren't doing wolves any favors with that attitude.

The ongoing discussion regarding the wolf of North Africa is paradigmatic of the plasticity of the species and the uncertainty of canids' taxonomy; modern genetic studies have provided sufficient (but still highly debated) evidence that all the golden jackals from Egypt to Senegal should be reclassified as wolves. Zoologists have been running after this huge diversity of forms, from trying to apply their rudimentary rules of taxonomy, and in the past have zealously named over 30 subspecies of Canis lupus (currently reduced to less than a dozen). But the taxonomy does not reflect the true nature of the diversity of wolves; the conventions of zoological nomenclature impose an artificial stiffness to a complex of forms that is essentially fluid in time and space. The human obsession for categories (species and subspecies) finds in the wolf a serious challenge. Defining a subspecies is always a subjective exercise as there are no fixed and general rules to identify the boundaries of a putative subspecies. And this is especially difficult for wolf taxonomy, one that has been based opportunistically each time on a unique haplotype, a morphological feature of the skull, a colour pattern of the pelt and so on with, a list of mainly ad hoc characters. Current genomic advances promise to contribute new objective information, but how to use affinities and distances will remain a human choice. I confess my complete lack of excitement for these taconomic exercises, but I also understand the importance of names as conservation works only if populations are recognisable, and a name can make a difference between the conservation of a species or its removal from the wild.

Large carnivores have always had a special role in human cultures, a sort of fascination rooted in a fear of carnivores as potential killers of humans and human envy of the carnivores' strength and success as hunters. Lions in Africa, tigers in Asia, jaguars in central-south America, all have played a prominent, often central role in human values, perceptions and attitudes towards nature. The wolf fills this role throughout its vast distribution range, from North America to most of Eurasia and southwards to the sands of Arabia and the forests of central India. But the wolf is more than that, as it pervades human cultures more deeply and extensively than any other species on earth.

The wolf was never eradicated in the Apennines in central Italy, where it has always been part of nature. The people there don't have a problem with wolves. But when they return to regions where they haven't existed for more than a century, as is the case in Germany today, people still have all these ancient stories in their heads. Of course, wolves killed people in the past. But that was before we had firearms. Wolves have learned that people can also be dangerous when they're far away, which is why they normally make a wide berth around us.

Many years ago, I was on Ellesmere Island in Canada with my colleague David Mech. There were wolves living on the island, and employees at a weather station there had been feeding them every day. Those wolves were no longer afraid of us. We were able to drive up to them on our quads and watch entire packs during play, at a distance of only a few meters. Fortunately, Ellesmere Island is in the Arctic, and there are hardly any people living there for whom the wolves could become dangerous. Nevertheless, we asked the employees at the weather station to stop feeding them.

How many people have been eaten by wolves in Europe recently? [...] Fear of wolves is part of our culture, as is the fear of snakes, even though only a fraction of snakes are poisonous. In Finland, for example, fear of wolves is also widespread. At a conference on species conservation last year, we asked Finnish attendees where this fear comes from. They said that someone was once killed by wolves in Finland. When we asked them when it happened, they said it was about 400 years ago.

When the first domestic animals arrived in 1609 at Jamestown, Virginia, the war against the wolf was official. More than effective weapons, the American pioneer had a sense of solidarity and social cohesion, which in part was the effect of having common enemies, including the wolf. The battle against wolves was not an individual's affair, but a challenge to all. The wolf was the essence of wildness and cruel predation, the ally of barbaric Indians, a creature of twilight. Its elimination was depicted as more than just practical; it tested he resolve and spiritual fortitude of the pioneer. Its destruction could enable the spirit and unite a community.