Metaphors of Encroachment: Hunting for Wolves on a Central Greek Mountain

When wolves reappeared on Mount Parnassos (Central Greece) in the late 1980s for the first time in 35 years, shepherds of the region mounted dramatic armed campaigns involving as many as 200 hunters. Local debates and satirical poems concerning the wolf hunts illuminate the conflicts between shepherds and other social groups in the community. Since the money, time, and emotion expended on the wolf hunts were far greater than the domages caused by the wolves. The A. suggests that the shepherds were responding to the image more than the substance of the wolves ; the wolves hunts became a key symbol and rallying point for the shepherds, whose numbers, status, and power are all diminishing within an increasingly tourism-oriented economy.