A serious act of poaching has hit the woods of Val d’Ayas, reopening a wound that has never completely healed in the management of wildlife. Last Saturday 7 November, near the municipality of Brusson in the Aosta Valley, the lifeless body of a 4-year-old female wolf was found. The macabre discovery and the conditions of the animal prompted the agents of the Valle d’Aosta Forestry Corps to launch prompt investigations to reconstruct the dynamics of what happened.
The veterinarians of Cermas (the national reference center for wild animal diseases) therefore carried out necropsy and pathological examinations on the animal’s corpse. The analyzes confirmed that the cause of death was attributable to a rifle shot fired at point-blank range on the specimen’s muzzle, a detail that excludes fatalities such as a road accident or death from natural causes and points towards illegal killing.
The regulatory context and the scourge of poaching in Italy
The killing of the wolf comes at a delicate stage for environmental protection policies. At a European and national level, the protection of the species has undergone a reduction, going from the level of strictly protected to that of simply protected species. Furthermore, in mid-September 2026, the Valle d’Aosta Region approved the Regional Wolf Control Plan, which establishes the possibility of authorized culling in accordance with the ISPRA guidelines to monitor packs and mitigate conflicts with pastoralism.
However, the summary execution which took place in the woods of Brusson constitutes a criminal violation outside of any management protocol, re-proposing the emergency of underground poaching. Data from the official report on wolf mortality relating to the five-year period 2019-2023, published in November 2025, show that 197 cases of illegal killing were recorded in Italy, equal to an average of 39 specimens per year. An undercount, considering the submerged nature of the phenomenon, which demonstrates how the tensions between the presence of the herds and the human communities are still dramatically resolved with gunshots.
