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In 2011, a young wolf named Slavc set out from Slovenia, only a few months after researchers had trapped and fitted him with a GPS collar. Remarkably, they were able to follow his journey in waypoints transmitted every 190 minutes, as he travelled well over a thousand miles through mountains and wooded valleys, arriving four months later on the Lessinian plateau, north of Verona.

There had been no wolves in northern Italy for a century, but here fate intervened and he met a female wolf on a walkabout of her own. A decade later and there are more than a hundred wolves back in the area, the result of their remarkable meeting.

In Lone Wolf, Adam Weymouth walks Slavc's path, using the GPS route to make the journey as the wolf had made it. Along the way he examines the changes facing these wild corners of Europe. Here, the call to protect and rewild meets the urge to preserve culture and tradition. In local and regional politics, a fierce nationalism has risen up in opposition to globalisation; climate change in Europe and beyond is radically changing lives; and migrants, too, in response to these changes are also on the move.

The result is a multifaceted account of a region caught in a moment of kaleidoscopic flux.

Adam Weymouth’s first book, Kings of the Yukon, tells the story of his 2000-mile canoe trip across Alaska. It won the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year, the Lonely Planet/ Stanfords Adventure Travel Book of the Year and the Prix Paul-Emile Victor.

Sound Effects Credit: The recording ‘Lone Wolf Howls in Winter Night’ was made in 2024, by the Croatian producer and field recordist Ivo Vicic and used by permission.

Written by Adam Weymouth
Read by Tom Mothersdale
Abridged and produced by Jill Waters
The Waters Company for ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Radio 4