IS THE GREY WOLF A POTENTIAL PREDATOR OF EURASIAN BEAVERS IN CENTRAL ITALY?

he Eurasian beaver Castor fiber went extinct throughout most of Europe between Medieval times and the XIX century. Since early 1900, protection laws and authorised/unauthorised reintroductions have occurred in most countries and the population of this species is now widespread between Northern Spain and Western Mongolia. In Europe, the main predator of the Eurasian beaver is the grey wolf Canis lupus. In this preliminary work, we aimed to assess the wolf diet in an area of Central Italy where beavers occurred at least since 2019. We collected 69 scats in a riverine area in the province of Arezzo between 2021 and 2022. We did not find any evidence of beaver consumption: the main prey species in the study area were the wild boar Sus scrofa and the coypu Myocastor coypus, followed by domestic sheep Ovis aries and cervids.