Hosts: Brunella & Rachel will give updates on Italian and Wisconsin gray wolves. Brunella will be live from Italy! Rachel will be live from Wisconsin. This will be our premiere broadcast! You will get a chance to ask us questions live from Facebook. And we will reveal the quest for the next show. See you soon! To watch the show click the link on May 13th at 10:30 AM. Go to Wolves of Douglas Co WI News Media & Films Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/heartofwolfadvocacyfilmproject/videos/697641794113612/
Host Brunella Pernigotti will give a brief update on Italy’s gray wolves
Do you know where Italy is? Did you know that there are rare gray wolves existing only in Italy? Do you want to know how many wolves there were left in Italy in 1970? This is what Brunella will tell you about Italian gray wolves, and you’ll get a chance to ask her questions.
Italy consists of a 1,400km (about 860 miles) long boot-shaped peninsula extending out into the central Mediterranean Sea, together with a number of islands to the South and West. It is dominated by mountains. There are two mountain ranges: the Alps which run in the North, from West to East, and are the natural border between Italy and Northern Europe and the Apennines which run north-south through the peninsula and are like the back bone of the country. The Alpine mountain range is linked with the Apennines, so the wolves after being almost exterminated at the beginning of the twentieth century, from the 70s returned to colonize the Italian territory going up from the Apennines to the Alps. The Italian wolf was widespread in the Italian Peninsula, including Sicily, until the middle of the 19th century. The extermination of the grey wolf in Italy was not as complete as in Northern Europe, due to greater cultural tolerance of the species. It was largely extirpated in the Alps at the beginning of the 20th century and disappeared from Sicily before the Second World War. Its range along the south-central Apennines was still relatively continuous by the Fifties, though this population was reduced reaching the all-time low number of almost 100 individuals in the early 1970s. In Italy we have a particular kind of gray wolves, they are called Canis Lupus Italicus. They particularly need to be protected because they are a rare subspecies which exists only in Italy. https://www.wwf.it/lupo/soslupo/
There are about 2000 wolves living here nowadays, https://www.agi.it/blog-italia/ispra/lupi_dati_censimento-4699463/post/2018-12-04/ but since Italy is densely populated, they are very elusive, so monitoring them and making an effective census is very hard. They hide into the wild as much as they can, searching for the few safe places left for them.
You can learn more about Matteo Serafini an Italian Wolf Researcher by clicking my interview of him here: https://wolvesofdouglascountywisconsin.com/2019/09/21/interview-with-matteo-serafini-an-italian-wolf-researcher/
Host Rachel Tilseth will give a brief update on Wisconsin’s Gray wolf
Did you know Wisconsin has more wolves than Yellowstone National Park? Wisconsin’s 2018-19 overwinter minimum wolf count was 914-978: https://dnr.wi.gov/topic/Wildlifehabitat/wolf/documents/2018-19wolfcountbrief.pdf compared to as of January 2020, there are at least 94 wolves in Yellowstone National Park. Feb 13, 2020: https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/nature/wolves.htm
Did you know Wisconsin’s Wolf Recovery Program began in the late 1970s under the guidance of Wolf Biologist Richard P Thiel? Thiel runs Timber Wolf Information Network (TWIN) located in central Wisconsin. In 1991 Adrian Wydeven became the Head Wolf Biologist, retiring in 2014. Wydeven created a citizen volunteer wolf tracking program. Wydeven now serves on the board of Timber Wolf Alliance (TWA) out of Northland College in Ashland, Wisconsin. Both non profits,TWA & TWIN, are set up to educate the public about Wisconsin’s Gray wolf. Both non profits hold Wolf Ecology Workshops throughout Wisconsin. Timber Wolf Alliance website: https://www.northland.edu/centers/soei/twa/ and Timber Wolf Information Network website: http://www.timberwolfinformation.org/
Show premieres Wednesday May 13th at 10:30 AM Central Time on Wolves of Douglas Co WI News Media & Films Facebook page by clink the following link: https://www.facebook.com/heartofwolfadvocacyfilmproject/videos/697641794113612/
About Host Brunella Pernigotti
Brunella lives in Turin, Italy. She’s a teacher, a writer and a photographer. She has published a novel and a book of tales and has to her credit about ten personal photographic exhibitions. She’s a member of the board of a no-profit association of Turin, “Tribù del Badnightcafè”, that organizes cultural and artistic events. Besides she works as a volunteer to help women who have been victim of domestic violence.
She says: “I love wolves and nature in general. Even if I’m not a biologist, I’ve been studying wolves and their problems for many years. I’ve been devoting myself to the protection of the environment and of the endangered species as far as I can do.”
About Host Rachel Tilseth
Rachel has worked with the Wisconsin Wolf Recovery Program as a volunteer since 1998, and as a result learned about the lives of wild gray wolves. Rachel has been an official Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Volunteer Winter Wolf Tracker since the year 2000. Rachel worked to draw attention to the plight of Gray wolves during the three years Wisconsin held wolf hunts. As an environmentalist Rachel has organized events, film screenings and a film festival. Rachel is working on several projects that help bring education and awareness to gray wolves in Wisconsin and around the world. Rachel received a Bachelor of Science Degree in Art Education in 1992 from UW-Stout, graduating with cum laude honors.
I believe the gray wolf is part of Wisconsin’s wild legacy! —Rachel Tilseth
Stories of People & Wolves Next Guest will be Suzanne Stone
Suzanne has worked for over three decades to restore wolves to the Rockies and Pacific Northwest. Initially, she served as an intern for the Central Idaho Wolf Steering Committee and as a member of the 1995/1996 USA/Canadian Wolf Reintroduction team restoring wolves to Yellowstone National Park and Central Idaho. From 1999 to 2019, she led development of Defenders of Wildlife’s wolf coexistence measures and models to minimize losses of livestock and gray wolves in the West. She is the co-founder of the Wood River Wolf Project in Idaho and has won numerous awards for her leadership in wildlife conflict resolution and coexistence including being a two time recipient of the Animal Welfare Institute’s Christine Stevens Wildlife Award for innovative research on humane, nonlethal tools and techniques for wildlife conflict management. She is the lead author/researcher of Adaptive use of nonlethal strategies for minimizing wolf–sheep conflict in Idaho published by the Journal of Mammalogy in 2017. Suzanne helped to establish several of the nonlethal/coexistence measures to minimize conflicts between wild predators and livestock today including FoxLights, Turbofladry, range riders, wind dancers, carcass removal, use of multiple livestock guardian dogs, and more. She is working now all over the world to help transform archaic wildlife management from lethal to humane nonlethal methods.
Wood River Wolf Project – The Wood River Wolf Project is a collaborative of conservation organizations, ranching operations, community members, and county, state and federal agencies working together to use proactive, nonlethal deterrents to minimize livestock and wolf conflicts. Since 2008, the Wood River Wolf Project has been helping Blaine County ranchers in Central Idaho implement nonlethal strategies to successfully reduce livestock losses and protect native wildlife.
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