A Monastery for the Ibex: Conservation, State, and Conflict on the Gran Paradiso, 1919-1949

Finalist, 2023 Turku Book Award

Gran Paradiso National Park is Italy's oldest, and was instrumental in preventing the extinction of the Alpine ibex between World War I and just after World War II. Today, there are more than 30,000 ibex living in the Alps, all of which descended from that last colony protected in Gran Paradiso under Mussolini's rule. Wilko Graf von Hardenberg merges the history of conservation with the area's social history and Italy's larger political history to produce a mu...