The fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 brought many changes to Europe. One of the more unexpected was that it allowed the big carnivores of Eastern Europe to begin expanding their range westward, where for centuries they had been practically unknown.
Few large mammals, people included, had been permitted to cross from east to west before the borders reopened. From the guard towers, they shot the bears for fun. Today, the European wolf is undergoing a remarkable resurgence. Once the most widely spread terrestrial mammal on the planet, by the end of the Second World War they had been pushed almost to extinction. They were entirely gone from Central Europe and Scandinavia. But for two small groups in the Apennines, a few in Iberia and some larger pockets in Eastern Europe, you would have struggled to find any at all.
