Two more years
La Province of Cuneo has extended the two provincial plans for the control of wildlife that causes damage to agriculture and the environment, in particular for the dormouse and the coypu, better known as the beaver. With the unanimous vote of the Provincial Council on the favorable opinion of Ispra (Higher Institute for Environmental Prevention and Research) the Plans will be valid for another two years as regards the dormouse and four years for the nutria.
Monitoring activities
Damage from dormouse (glis glis) mainly concerns the hazelnut groves present in the Granda and continues to be significant. There are approximately 228 agricultural and especially hazelnut companies involved. Ispra has assessed that, given the density estimates of this animal species, the sampling will not entail significant risks for the dormouse populations being controlled. The monitoring activity of the damage detected will therefore continue, also directly relating the damage found on the companies that actually implement the control interventions with the animal removal data, also with the aim of defining the compensation requested by the other companies and to a careful evaluation of the effectiveness of the plan. The containment activity which takes place with cages, nest boxes and photo traps, will also continue in 2024 and 2025 under close coordination of the Hunting and Fishing Office of the Province of Cuneo and with the involvement of the companies that have proven motivated and willing to follow the approved control protocols.
The nutria question
With the same criteria, the numerical control plan for nutria (myocastor coypus) was also extended on the basis of the national management plan for the semi-aquatic rodent species native to South America, which lives in marshes, lake shores and watercourses . It feeds mainly on plant parts, among which it prefers roots, tubers and rhizomes, but in the regions where it has been introduced, it feeds on any available crop, causing damage to cultivated plants, considered by the animal to be more appetizing and nutritious than the wild ones.
Cages and traps
The nutria also seems to have a negative impact on the fauna, in particular on some small birds that live in humid environments, in addition to the hydraulic damage it causes due to its habit of digging long tunnels and underground burrows with risks to the integrity of the embankments of streams natural water, irrigation and drainage channels and artificial basins, particularly during floods. In the province of Cuneo, the nutria appeared at the end of the 2000s, moving up the hydrographic network of the main rivers of the Cuneo plain and in the early XNUMXs the species continued to expand its range of presence, always following the river network until it also reached piedmont locations and mountainous. The control of the species occurs through capture with cage-traps and also through direct culling by the Environmental Wildlife Police of the Province (source: Province of Cuneo).
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