METAPHORS OF ENCROACHMENT - HUNTING FOR WOLVES ON A CENTRAL GREEK MOUNTAIN

When wolves reappeared on Mount Parnassos in the late 1980s for the fi rst time in thirty-five years, shepherds of the region mounted dramati c armed campaigns involving as many as 200 hunters. Local debates and satirical poems concerning the wolf hunts illuminate the conflicts bet ween shepherds and other social groups in the community. Since the mon ey, time, and emotion expended on the wolf hunts were far greater than the damages caused by the wolves, this article suggests that the shep herds were responding to the image more than the substance of the wolv es; the wolf hunts became a key symbol and rallying point for the shep herds, whose numbers, status, and power are all diminishing within an increasingly tourism-oriented economy.