I Sardinian hunters interested in practicing big game hunting notwithstanding the wild in areas infected with African swine fever, must send a specific request to the Veterinary Service of the Assl competent for the area. From this hunting season, in fact, the renewal of the authorization issued in the previous year is not allowed. Therefore the instances to obtain a new authorization and the attached documentation, must be forwarded without delay by 15 August to the Veterinary Service of Animal Health competent for the area which, in turn, sends them to the Inspectorate of the Forestry Corps for the competent opinion.
The documentation is available from i Veterinary Services of each ASL or you can download it from the website of the Autonomous Region of Sardinia. In the 2018-2019 hunting season, 663 practices for hunting in derogation were instructed. This documentation has allowed the authorization of: 28 hunting companies in the territory of the ASL Cagliari; 118 companies in the territory of ASSL Lanusei; 267 companies in the territory of the Nuoro ASL; 159 companies in the territory of the ASL Sassari; 91 companies in the territory of the ASL Olbia. “The collaboration of the hunters in the sampling of the slaughtered wild boars, the so-called active surveillance, was very important - says the single coordinator of ATS Sardinia for African swine fever, Francesco Sgarangella.
An activity defined as strategic also by the EC inspectors who first monitored the progress of the Psa virus eradication plan in Sardinia and then met the hunting associations which, once again, demonstrate strong cohesion and motivation in pursuing the objective oferadication of the virus". During the last hunting season, the hunting companies that gave 12.716 health samples, of which 5.582 were taken within the infected area for wild animals: the samples revealed 5 cases of virus-positive wild boars compared to 22 in the previous hunting year, a trend in sharp decline.
In addition, passive surveillance activities based on the search for dead wild boars inside the wildlife protection institutes adjacent to the hunting areas in which the positivity to the virus was found. “Considering the short period of wild boar hunting - concludes Sgarangella - the collaboration of the hunting world is essential so that, at any time of the year, the findings of dead wild boars are reported to the Veterinary Services. Today we are able to detect the presence of the virus even several months after the animal's death and we can collect a good amount of information both on the hunted and in the context of passive surveillance. Data that allows us to monitor the eradication process of the virus with ever greater accuracy ".