A suspected wolf attacked a mother, her 12-year-old daughter, and a man at a tourist facility in southern Italy, the latest in a string of animal attacks that have forced towns across the country to shut down parks and green spaces after dark.
The attack happened Thursday evening at Punta Pizzo, a coastal area near Gallipoli on Italy's southern tip, when an unidentified animal charged a 52-year-old woman and her daughter at a tourist accommodation. A 47-year-old man staying at the same facility rushed in and fought the animal off with kicks and punches, the Daily Mail reported. CCTV captured the encounter on video.
All three victims were taken to a hospital and later discharged. The Forestry Carabinieri, Italy's environmental law-enforcement branch, now patrol the area around Punta Pizzo, searching for the animal. Italian news agency Ansa reported that an investigation into the exact species is still ongoing, though several Italian outlets have called it a wolf.
Before the attack, the mother and daughter had handed their pet dog to an unidentified woman, who then fled the scene with the animal. Whether the dog was harmed remains unclear.
The Gallipoli incident is not isolated. Roughly 125 miles to the north, in the Bari area of Puglia, authorities have been hunting a separate animal since it attacked three children on August 4. That same animal, or one like it, seriously maimed two people in the nearby town of Noicattaro on August 15.
A task force deployed thermal imaging cameras, drones, and snares to track the Bari-area animal. The local mayor ordered parks and green spaces closed every night after the attacks, a shutdown that was only recently set to lift.
Farther north, in the Umbria region, searches continue for an animal that attacked a four-year-old girl in Valnerina on July 9. And on the same Thursday as the Gallipoli attack, a French bulldog was mauled and killed in the towns of Oria and San Pietro Vernotico despite its owners' attempts to intervene.
The coastal city of Riccione has closed its green spaces at night through September 3.
Antonio Camarda, a professor of veterinary medicine at the University of Bari and a member of the task force pursuing the Bari-area animal, said the attacks do not fit the pattern of ordinary wolf behavior.
Camarda told reporters the animal is displaying "abnormal behaviour" for a wolf. He added that a typical wolf "does not attack humans, because humans are not prey."
That assessment raises an uncomfortable question Italian authorities have yet to answer: if these animals are wolves, what changed? And if they are not wolves, what are they?
Italy's strict conservation laws brought wolves back from the edge of extinction in the 1970s. By 2022, the country's wolf population had climbed to an estimated 3,300. The recovery has been celebrated as an environmental achievement.
But a growing wolf population means growing contact with humans, especially in a country where tourists crowd coastal towns and rural areas every summer. Camarda suggested the animal involved in the Bari-area attacks may have become accustomed to venturing into populated areas after feeding on stray animals.
That explanation fits a familiar pattern. Conservation policies designed by bureaucrats and academics deliver real consequences to ordinary people, the vacationing mother, the 12-year-old girl, the man who had to fight off a wild animal with his bare hands. The laws protected the wolves. Nobody planned for what happens when the wolves stop fearing people.
Italian towns are now improvising responses one park closure and one drone flight at a time. The species of the Gallipoli attacker remains unconfirmed. The Bari-area animal remains uncaptured. And tourist season rolls on.
When the people who write the conservation rules never have to outrun the results, the rules tend to stay on the books long after the math stops working.
