Alpine regions are currently undergoing profound climatic, demographic, and sociocultural transformations affecting life in the Alps. An Environmental Humanities perspective understands these transformations as a multifaceted and complex interplay between natural environments and human and nonhuman interactions, particularly salient amid climate change and biodiversity loss. Scholars and researchers in this field examine how human activities impact the natural landscape and the multispecies communities that inhabit it, and vice versa.

Building on this framework, the session will focus on the cultural, political, and media debates surrounding the return of large predators—especially wolves—as a decisive and multifaceted form of transformation in the Alpine region. We situate these developments within the paradigm of “rewilding” as a contemporary conservation response to climate collapse and species decline. This agenda is reflected in EU policy initiatives such as the Green Deal (2019) and the Nature Restoration Law (2024), which aim to restore 20% of EU territory by 2030. Accordingly, we address the intense public debates and resistance surrounding wolf recolonization in Alpine regions, the high conflict potential identified for the Alpine region—particularly in relation to farming and tourism—and the entanglement with cultural memory and figures such as the “big bad wolf.”

We invite cultural studies contributions, using empirical or theoretical approaches and contemporary and/or historical perspectives, to examine how meanings, values, and practices are transforming and how Alpine communities shape coexistence and conflict with large predators.