TURIN - Wildlife fans cheered the return of the first wolves to northern Italy's snowy slopes a few years ago after an absence of some 80 years.
Survival remains an uphill struggle for the species, however.
The 2006 Winter Olympics in the Italian Alps will cut right through the wolves' hunting grounds.

Pragelato, in the past a quiet mountain hamlet, hosts some of the most spectacular Games venues -- five new ski jumping hills
"There used to be a pack of wolves in that area," said Francesca Marucco, researcher at the northern Italian Piemonte wolf project. "It looks like they've moved away, judging from the excrement we've gathered."
Collecting and analysing wolf excrement is among the many techniques Marucco and her colleague Elisa Avanzelli use to assess the number of animals in Piemonte, their diet and favourite hunting grounds.
In winter, the researchers look for wolf tracks in the snow. In summer, they howl at the mountains in the hope that wolves will howl back, giving them an idea of how many there are.
"We imitate howls or use recordings, and especially the cubs do respond. But there are many variables, and sometimes the wolves just don't feel like responding," Avanzelli told Reuters.
Despite their efforts, the data remains vague. Avanzelli believes there are some 15 to 18 European wolves, or canis lupus lupus, in the area where the Turin Winter Games will take place.
FAIRY TALES
Big, bad wolves feature prominently in European fables and fairy tales such as Little Red Riding Hood but the predators disappeared from much of western Europe as humans cut down the dense forests and invaded the remote mountains where they lived.
Those that survived in southern Italy, Spain and Portugal were placed under protection, so successfully that the wolf population has slowly started to expand again, with wolves venturing further north towards the Alps and even France.
They returned to Piemonte from southern Italy some five or six years ago, after the last wolf in the area was killed in 1921. There are now some 250 wolves in the whole country.
Wolf researcher Marucco finds it hard to predict the precise impact of the Olympics on the Piemonte packs, but she sees it as yet another blow to a species struggling to make a comeback.
"There are two big problems -- the fragmentation of habitat and the destruction of habitat. Of course the wolves will adapt somewhat to the changes. But there will be a loss of habitat which will affect all the species," Marucco said.
Roads and railway slicing through Piemonte broke up wolf territory long before work started for the Games, and eight wolves have been killed in accidents in the last three years.
The researchers fear traffic could increase during the Feb. 10-26 Olympics, making accidents more likely.
Roberto Saini, environment director at Turin's Olympic committee, TOROC, believes the concerns are unfounded, since there will be a partial car ban during the Games, forcing people to switch to public transport.
He also said that noisy building works were coming to an end, and animals would get used to venues such as a new bobsleigh track and the ski jumping hills.
"The biggest problem were the building sites, because they interrupted the movements of various species, not just the wolves," he told Reuters.
CRYING WOLVES
Wolves are certainly adaptable and have started foraging for food individually rather than hunting in packs to cope with shrinking hunting grounds in Italy.
Environmental activists such as Fabio Porcari at the World Wildlife Fund's Turin office argue that the Olympics could still harm the species.
Porcari said young wolves in particular used to wander between the different national parks in Piemonte, which was already difficult before the Games due to the traffic.
"Add to that a bobsleigh track, ski jumping hills, and a cross-country track and there are big problems," he said.
Organisers of the Olympics have splashed out on state-of-the-art venues and the renovation of existing ski resorts. But they have also committed themselves to staging "green" Olympics, drawing up a complex cost-benefit analysis to minimise the environmental impact.
Wolf scientists Marucco and Avanzelli hope this commitment will encourage regional officials to help the animals deal with a possible wave of tourists and traffic in the Olympic aftermath, if not during the Games themselves.
Marucco suggested fencing in roads and railways in areas where there were frequent wildlife accidents, and constructing long wooden bridges that could be used by wolves and also deer and other animals for safe crossings.
While critics of the Olympics point out that many expensive venues are abandoned after the Games in a waste of public money, Marucco sees this as a reason for optimism.
"Who knows, maybe after two years no-one will be using these venues any more and the wolves might come back," she said.