Often the villain in legends and fairy tales, wolves are actually credited with playing a transformative role that affects the very makeup of the forest.

American wolves are thriving again. Reintroduced in 1995, almost 6,000 of them now live in the lower 48 states and another 8,000 to 11,000 live in Alaska. German wolves, on the other hand, have been struggling. But while only about 150 adult wolves surviv

Wolves are making a comeback in Germany— but does a modern industrial society really have room enough for people as well as large predators? After all, when standing on its hind legs, an adult wolf is as tall as a grown human being. And as wolves return to their former habitats, how are these new arrivals transforming the balance of the species as a whole? We now have some answers to these relatively recent questions. Since the beginning of this century, wolves have been reintroduced to German forests in one of the biggest wildlife restoration efforts in history, bringing them back to one of the more densely populated countries in Europe. German ecologists have learned from the experience of other countries, especially the United States, that the presence of these animals can have a huge impact on ecosystems. As apex predators, wolves exert an enormous influence on the food chain. In Yellowstone National Park, for example, wolf reintroduction lowered the numbers of both the hunters (coyotes) and the hunted (deer) by more than 50% within only a few years. Among other things, this has significantly affected the growth of new trees, the sleeping patterns of bears— and even the nature of rivers. But can comparable results be expected for the wolves in Germany? Here Peter Wohlleben describes to id what can be expected as the reintroduction effort widens. The forest ranger, author of numerous books about plants and animals, and founder of a forest academy explains why even small changes can have a large effect on nature— and why he still walks carefree through the woods despite the wolves.