Rangers are also studying the possibility of culling the infected wolf, both to save it from undue suffering and to prevent the spread of the disease to other members of its pack.
“Rome and the EU should intervene quickly before it’s too late,” Leandro Grones, a local mayor, wrote on Facebook.
After more than 40 years of protection under stringent laws, wolves are on the rebound in Italy, as they are in France, Germany and many other countries in Europe.
Last week a large wolf was photographed in the middle of a village in the Italian Alps, in the Piedmont region.
The photograph was taken by a ski instructor who happened to be walking through the village of Entracque at night.
He came across the wolf staring intently through a fence at a domestic dog. The dog was staring back, in an apparent standoff - or at least mutual curiosity - between the canids. After a few moments, the wolf was startled by a noise, and loped off into the night. Sky more