Firefighters have rescued a wolf that had fallen into a canal in the town of San Giovanni Lupatoto, in the Veneto region of northern Italy.
The distressed animal had taken refuge from flowing waters beneath a footbridge, before the fire brigade’s river rescue team arrived to save it.
After manoeuvring it onto land, firefighters handed the sedated female wolf over to veterinarians for care, ahead of an anticipated release into the wild.
Italian wolves are a protected species in the country. An estimated 950 live in Italy’s Alpine region, with more than 3,000 recorded in the nation as a whole by the latest official survey, carried out in 2021.