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For centuries, humans treated wolves with fear and loathing. They were hunted to near extinction. In the last few decades, efforts in the United States and Europe have been working to bring them back with some notable success. NPR's Ruth Sherlock takes us to the forests of Italy, the country with the most wolves in Europe. She went out with an organization that takes small groups to try to see wolves in the wild and was surprised by what she found.

We walk with Valeria Rosselli, a guide with the group Wildlife Adventures. We're in the national park of Abruzzo, Lazio and Molise. It's just about 90 minutes from Rome, but it's another world.

We're in an ancient forest where there are whispers of a distant past. Pre-Roman populations worshipped in these woods to gods for the protection of trees and animals. Rosselli now dedicates her life to help people of this era respect nature.

For this trip, for four days, she will take us on a journey into the world of the wolf. After centuries of persecution that drove wolves to near extinction, their population has rebounded in recent decades. Italy is the European country with the most wolves.

Their eerie, beautiful calls, like this one captured by the organisation Iononopoora de Lupo, I'm Not Scared of the Wolf, can be heard across this region. We begin our expedition early. It is just after 5.30 in the morning and it is raining, and I mean really raining. But apparently one of the best times to see animals is just after dawn.

Although I can't imagine that wolves would want to be out in this rain any much more than we do. We drive through the dark and the rain until dawn reveals the spectacle around us. Mountains, pink in the morning sunshine, a lake that stretches down to a picturesque village. In this first hour, we see herds of deer grazing, wild boar and... Big, healthy red fox!

It doesn't seem bothered by us. Wolves are much harder to find. Rosselli passes us binoculars and we sit still to watch for them. This is one of the hard moments because we need to be very, very, very, very, very, very patient. The term pack for wolves really means a family. Two parents, wolves mate for life, and their young. Having a wolf in a natural environment...

Having a wolf in an environment is a thing of prestige, Rosselli says. The wolf's such an iconic species and in England there's a lot of talk about missing predators. Steve Walker is a conservationist from the United Kingdom on this trip. The UK doesn't have apex predators and Walker says without wolves or lynx he struggles to protect the forest where he works...

from the large populations of deer that strip the ground of wildflowers and shrubs. So you get really hollowed out, quiet woodlands, then you lose all the other species that go with it. Wolves keep populations of deer and other ungulates down and on the move.

They help keep the ecosystem in balance and you can see the difference here in Italy, he says. Stunning, stunning place with an intact natural ecosystem just with the smallest, smallest chance of actually seeing a wolf in the wild. You just know they're out there probably watching us. One afternoon Eros Zanotti, another in our party, takes a walk in the woods behind our hotel and... Where do you stay?

He's seen them, two wolves only metres away from him. The closest we get that day to seeing what we're after is the wolf museum in a nearby town. It was opened in the 1970s as part of a campaign to change the public's view of wolves as being big, bad creatures.

Here's our guide, Rosselli, in English. They decided to create a project to save from the extinction the Apennine wolf, the Italian wolf. Museum paintings show the saint, Francis of Assisi, leaning down to take the paw of a wolf. He became friends with the wolves and he talked with the wolves.

In this deeply Catholic country, the campaigners used the story of Francis to try to change Italians' perceptions of this animal for the better. It worked. There are now about 3,500 wolves in Italy, according to a government census. The next day, at dawn, we head out again to try to see them. We're sitting in a line below a ridge on a hillside, and there's...

below us of fields and woodland. We've been here for several hours. It's a really hard thing to do, to see them. I do come close to seeing what I've come for, thanks to someone from my pack. Meanwhile, my husband has helpfully sent me a photo of a wolf. We break at a cafe in a jewel of a village, Hortona de Marci, with its perfectly preserved medieval buildings.

Like so many other rural places in Italy, it's almost empty these days. It was a place full of life, of artisans and local businesses, says Marina Eramo, who still lives in Ortona di Marsi. But people move to find jobs in cities, and with Italy's low birth rate, the countryside is emptying. And all this is leaving more space for animals.

I'm on a hiking trail with these majestic views of snow-capped mountains all around. There's juniper trees, pine forests. And this part of the trail overlaps with a route that wolves often use. We come across wolf's cat excrement with the hair of wild boar in it. Wolves hunt the weaker animals and in doing so they keep a species healthy.

Trekking across the patches of remaining snow, we spot something exciting. There's wolf prints in the snow. Another one here. And more in the fresh mud that follows. For sure, we are around the bus, but before us, before our passage. Just missed this. Amazing. We're so close. We're so close, but not close enough.

The wolves don't show themselves on this trip, but I feel closer to them somehow, these intelligent creatures with family structures that are not so different to our own. And in searching for them, I've learned more about myself, about the importance of taking moments to sit quietly in these frenetic times. I leave feeling calmer and reminded of how much we are a part of and need the natural world.

Ruth Sherlock, NPR News, Abruzzo, Italy. That's the state of the world from NPR. Thanks for listening.

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