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Tour leader Lee Morgan writes about the mammals of Abruzzo National Park in Italy … Bears, Wild Boar, Chamois and Wolves.
Chamois in Abruzzo National Park
It all started a few years back. We knew Abruzzo National Park was an excellent place to find wonderful floral displays and clouds of butterflies; year on year our clients returned happy and buzzing with their interesting botanical and invertebrate finds. But then something strange happened – our tour leaders began to hear rumours. From their comfortable hotel base just within the national park, tales of the large and unexpected filtered through to their ears at the dining table! Stories of huge shapes appearing in the morning mists … of things large and furry roaming about the hillsides – Bears were being seen regularly in the area, and quite a lot of them, too. So, naturally, they decided to take a look!
Abruzzo National Park is small – only about the size of Dartmoor, and consists of a mosaic of different habitats from scrub and woodland to alpine meadows. In such a landscape, even large mammals can ‘disappear’ and thrive amongst the patchwork of dense vegetation. About 50 Brown Bears live in the park. They’re completely wild, so you can never guarantee seeing them; however, encouraged by excellent sightings of Wolf, Wild Boar, Chamois and Bears, this year’s trip set off early one misty morning to investigate …
‘We got to the viewing platform at about 5.30am,’says tour leader Lee Morgan. ‘The sun was just coming up and, as the mist started to clear, we began to distinguish shapes on the hillside – we could make out Red and Roe Deer at first and then the much larger forms of Wild Boar. Some were real whoppers – the size of a Mini. It’s unusual to see adult males reaching that size – they must have been particularly wily individuals that have managed to escape being shot!
‘It’s very magical watching the hillside light up in the dawn,’ says Lee. ‘And after a bit we realised there were other shapes, even bigger again, a different order of magnitude – Bears! They’re very obvious in comparison with the other mammals, they’re so massive. There was a big male showing rather a lot of interest in one of the females. She had the previous year’s cubs with her and she kept trying to hurry them off. The male sniffed the air and made a beeline for her. It was quite comic – he set off in hot pursuit, and managed to cover about 6km up steep hillsides in a very short space of time! He seemed to have a very clear idea of what he was about!’
Last year, our group had good Wolf sightings in Abruzzo, at the same spot. The Wolves had come down into the valley to harass the cattle. But, these traditional alpine cattle are not phased by the odd top carnivore – they corralled themselves so that horns were all pointing outwards and calves protected in the middle. The locals have kept to their traditional breeds of livestock enabling them to live alongside the Bears and Wolves with little fuss; and apparently their cows produce a unique and very tasty cheese, too!
The park’s Chamois, though completely wild, are quite used to seeing people in certain areas, and we’ve had unusually close views of large numbers of these splendid goat-antelopes on our tours here. Indeed, the Abruzzo Chamois has distinctive golden halo markings on its shoulders. ‘Curiously, Abruzzo’s Bears share the same distinctive patterning,’ says Lee. ‘It’s a subspecies called the Marsican Brown Bear that’s found here which is very attractive – it seems in Italy everything is stylish, even the mammals!’
Sightings of smaller mammals such as hares and martens have proved an added bonus on our Abruzzo tours, and there are other delights – from orchids and bats, to masses of butterflies. Some members of our tour group found themselves literally right in the middle of this year’s well-documented mass migration of Painted Ladies as a cloud of orange butterflies descended and surrounded some of them before taking to the air again.
‘The whole place is magical,’ says Lee, ‘from hospitable and friendly locals to splendid 5-course dinners – though meals have to be fitted in around wildlife-watching! Plus, the local red wine is superb! What I love is that there’s always something special to see – even if it’s not what you’d planned! On one of the evenings, to round off a day’s Bear-watching, we went out to listen for pipistrelles and owls … well, we didn’t have much luck as the weather wasn’t great, but then we noticed that all the hillsides were lit up with Glow Worms – like a green star-lit sky. It was out of this world.’
The Apennines: Italy’s Abruzzo National Park
An 8-day natural history holiday looking at the alpine and Mediterranean plants, birds and butterflies of the Abruzzo National Park, in the central Apennines, home of the endemic Marsican Brown Bear and Apennine Wolf.
Cost from £1195
Further details on the tour page.