Repopulations and game
It is a common experience that repopulations with farmed game (especially pheasants) give very disappointing results especially in terms of reproduction. A study conducted a few years ago in Great Britain (UK) confirms what the sensations are also for our country even if they are very different situations: in the UK repopulation with farmed subjects is used massively (hunting is in fact a significant source of income for many landowners), just think that around 35 million pheasants are released for hunting purposes every year! Precisely for this reason, however, Great Britain can be used to evaluate the efficiency of repopulation and the problems associated with such an intense and widespread use of this practice. It was observed that if in the 60s the yield of pheasants killed compared to those released was around 50%, today the efficiency of releases has dropped to a level of less than 35%.
Emblematic percentages
Furthermore, it is estimated that only 15% of the pheasants released for repopulation and escaped hunting arrive in the season following the release. Certainly, in Great Britain the intensification of industrial farming techniques and the extension of hunting throughout January may have caused an increased risk of mortality from natural causes, however among these, losses due to predation appear to be the main one ( the fox is expressly suspected). By comparison, individuals born and raised in the wild have a survival rate approximately seven times higher than those raised in the wild. If we then address the problem of the reproductive success of animals resulting from breeding, the data are even more dramatic.
Reproduction of wild animals
It was observed, again in the English study mentioned, that until around 1990, pheasant game had a close correlation with the summer survival of pheasants. This suggests that the game bag depended more on the reproduction of wild individuals than on repopulations and/or that the latter were able to contribute to natural reproduction. From 1990 onwards, however, this correlation is no longer recorded and it is therefore clear that the contribution of these animals to reproduction has almost disappeared. In practice, wild populations have been replaced by farmed ones which, however, are not able to reproduce at levels sufficient to sustain the populations.
Network of protected areas
A study done in Tuscany in the 2000s also highlighted that the game bag of this species was correlated with the percentage of ZRC while it showed no relationship with the number of farmed pheasants "launched". In fact, farmed pheasants show much lower fitness than wild ones for various reasons (behavioral, genetic, health, etc.). It is therefore essential to maintain as much of the wild populations of this species (and small resident game in general) as possible through the management of a network of protected areas (ZRC and similar institutes) and/or adopt forms of harvesting that do not exhaust the resource. fauna (source: FIDC).
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