mirror up to nature

In her journal for us, playwright Samantha Ellis chronicles the researches she undertook when writing The Last Wolf in Scotland. The plot revolves around the reintroduction of wolves in the Highlands, the local resistance and a mysterious outbreak of poisoning.

All these elements appear today, but in a French context, in the Independent's two-page story Alpine Murder Mystery. A shop-owner in the Maurienne area says that some local people feel victimised,

'They blame ecologists and city-dwellers and think that they want to get rid of shepherds and sheep and fill the mountains with wild animals. Some of them are very angry.'