Its December 2004, and this is about as far from virgin wilderness as you can come. The surrounding landscape consists of forest patches sliced into regimental squares by sandy tracks that are used for tanks and other military vehicles. In the background are the smoke stacks of a coal fired power stations, and at night the horizon glows with the massive machinery that runs the open cast coal mine that feeds the power station. The human caused scars in the Earth are massive. However unlikely it may seem this is where wolves have chosen to live. One or two packs have settled here, returning from across the border in Poland. At present this toehold in Germany is fragile, but it serves to underline that wolves can survive just about anywhere where we let them. Creatures of the wilderness they are not.