In 2011, Slavc The Wolf Journeyed 1,000 Miles To Begin Verona’s First Wolf Pack In 100 Years

In 2011, Slavc stunned scientists when – seemingly unprompted – he decided to ditch his family and embark on a 1,600-kilometer (1,000-mile) journey through the Alps, tackling treacherous terrain and extreme weather to arrive north of Verona in Italy. It was a part of the world that hadn’t seen wolves for a century, and then, that all changed.

Slavc’s journey led him to Juliet, a female wolf. As luck would have it, the pair hit it off and mated, welcoming to the region a litter of pups. It marked the first return of wolves to this part of Europe in 100 years, and the population has been gradually increasing ever since.

We got to follow along on Slavc’s epic journey thanks to the ongoing monitoring of wolves in Slovenia led by a team including Hubert Potočnik at the University of Ljubljana. These trackers provide around seven updates on a wolf’s location a day, and Slavc’s data started to make for very interesting reading.

The first sign he was up to something strange came when they observed him crossing two large motorways far outside of his territory. It’s hard to know what motivated the wolf to ditch his pack in search of the uncertain, but whatever it was proved to be enough to push him on a seemingly impossible journey.

Slavc’s tracker cropped up in a town, leading Potočnik to fear he had been shot, but then it continued on towards Austria, where he crossed rivers and came into uncomfortable proximity to farmland. Large predators like Eurasian wolves can result in costly fatalities for farmers as they kill their livestock, which is why governments are prepared to compensate such loss.

As he continued on to the Alps, Slavc managed to avoid getting caught up in any such conflicts and journeyed through heavy snow until he arrived in Italy. It was an impressive journey, but he wasn’t the first wolf to be spotted in Italy at the time. No, that race was won by a female.

A forestry official had filmed a female in the Regional Natural Park of Lessinia, marking the first time a wolf had been seen here in around 100 years. Slavc didn’t exactly make a beeline for her, but after a failed visit to a female in a zoo, he turned back and their paths finally crossed.

The success of these star-crossed lovers’ union was captured in camera traps that photographed two wolf pups. They were record breakers as babies, being the only known example of offspring born between a wolf from the Balkans and another from the Apennines. So, you can see why she ended up with a name like Juliet.

Adam Weymouth quite literally wrote the book on Slavc (it’s called Lone Wolf), and as he recently wrote for The Author, a decade on, this part of Italy is now home to over 100 wolves. We might not know why an 18-month-old wolf decided to go for a walk and never come back all those years ago, but we do know it started a love story for the ages.