Il Committee for the eradication of wild boars on the island of Elba writes to the Region, ministers and European Commission. "Faced with the increasing damage caused to the unique biodiversity of the Island of Elba and to its agricultural and tourist economy, - reads a note from the Committee - the Boar Eradication Committee Elba Island, which brings together over 70 signatures from environmental, agricultural, trade, cultural and business associations, wrote a letter to the president of the Tuscany Region: Eugenio Giani, to the "Agro-Food, Hunting and Fishing" and "Environment, Circular Economy, Soil Defense, Public Works and Civil Protection ": Stefania Saccardi and Monia Monni, to the ministers of Ecological Transition and Agricultural, Food and Forestry Policies: R.Cingolani and S.Patuanelli, to the European Commissioners and to the Commissions for the Environment and for Agriculture: W. Sinkevičius, J.Wojciechowski, F. Fink-Hooijer and W. Burtscher, to ask for an urgent meeting and immediate and decisive interventions to stop the ongoing ecocide on the Island of Elba and to protect its agricultural and tourist economy ". The letter, as explained by the Committee, was sent, for information, also to the mayors of the Island of Elba, the President and Director of the Tuscan Archipelago National Park, the Province of Livorno and ISPRA. Below we publish the full text of the letter / appeal:
Subject: Request for meeting and urgent initiatives for the serious ecological disaster on the Island of Elba due to the proliferation of introduced ungulates. On the Island of Elba (Province of Livorno, Tuscany), between the 60s and 70s wild boars (Sus scrofa) were introduced for hunting purposes, strongly hybridized with specimens from Central Europe and domestic pigs, in a territory where the last “Maremma” wild boar had been killed in 1802. The introduced wild boar population - allowed by the Province and Region of Tuscany - exploded due to a failed hunting management which led to a greater and exponential proliferation.
Subsequently, at the request of the municipalities and hunters, in the 80s, the Province of Livorno introduced mouflons (Ovis aries musimon) to Elba, another species that soon became invasive. In 1996, based on the provisions of Law 394/91 on protected areas, the Tuscan Archipelago National Park was established in 53% of the territory of the Island of Elba. For the western half of the Island of Elba, the Site of Community Importance (SIC), now the Special Conservation Area (SAC) and the Special Protection Area (SPA) Monte, had already been established on the basis of the European Directives for Habitats and Birds. Capanne Promontorio dell'Enfola, the ZPS / ZSC Eastern Elba was subsequently established.
In this very delicate context, hunting has increasingly proved to be an ineffective and harmful tool, whose impact was exacerbated by the decision of the Tuscany Region to declare the area outside the Tuscan Archipelago National Park (43%) "Area dedicated to wild boar ”, where an alien and invasive animal should thrive and which had become extinct on Elba more than 150 years before its reckless reintroduction, using much larger and more prolific animals than the extinct strain. On the Island of Elba there is a quality agriculture that boasts different Denominations of Controlled Origin (DOC) and Denomination of Controlled and Guaranteed Origin (DOCG) and which operates in often difficult situations, also maintaining the hydrogeological balance of an island marked by the "heroic" agriculture of terracing and dry stone walls.
The introduction and multiplication of wild boars and mouflons for hunting purposes is making all the protection measures for wild fauna and flora and the enhancement of the territory envisaged by Italian and European regulations vain: we are facing a real ecocide and to an economic disaster of enormous proportions, with the disappearance of many native species and the devastation of quality crops. An ecocide that calls the State and the Italian Parliament, which established the Tuscan Archipelago National Park to protect biodiversity and the territory, and the European Union, which together with the Region established the SPAs / SACs, to assume their responsibilities for the total failure to protect species and habitats and for the failure to contain two invasive alien species that are the cause of this same ecocide.
Only the National Park, in recent years, has actively intervened with the capture and selective killing of ungulates, while the containment measures outside the Park have been designed to favor the hunting activity of 300 hunters - up to the establishment of the 'Dedicated area - which hold 30.000 inhabitants hostage, the biodiversity and economy of an entire island. We are trembling just to think what would happen to our tourism economy if the African swine fever epidemic arrived on our territory. A situation so dramatic that the Board of the Tuscan Archipelago National Park has twice resolved to request the eradication of wild boars and mouflons (receiving the approval of the Higher Institute for Environmental Protection and Research - ISPRA) and that recently, 6 out of 7 mayors of the Island of Elba, gathered in the Community of the Park, asked the Tuscany Region to abolish the area dedicated to wild boar and to start a project to drastically reduce the population of ungulates, to then reach to eradication.
Requests promoted by this Committee and by the environmental and trade and economic associations that compose it and with which it is associated with the awareness that they represent the opinion of the vast majority of Elban citizens. For this reason the Committee, the Associations and all the signatories that compose it ask for an urgent meeting with the Regional Councilor for Agro-food, hunting and fishing and Vice-President Stefania Ceccardi, with the Councilor for the Environment, circular economy, defense of soil, public works and Civil Protection Monia Monni and with the President of the Tuscany Region Eugenio Giani to discuss the immediate revocation of the area dedicated to wild boar and the launch of initiatives - without ad hoc exceptions for the Elba of which there are rumors - for a rapid and drastic reduction of the ungulate population on the Island of Elba. A meeting with the political bodies and not with the officials of the offices, because the question is one of environmental and economic policy and concerns the environment and the economy of the third Italian island.
We ask the Minister of Ecological Transition Roberto Cingolani to carry on what his predecessor Sergio Costa had to say during a meeting at the Tuscan Archipelago National Park: a project to strongly reduce the populations of ungulates based on what was requested by the National Park and ISPRA and by the Municipalities. We ask the minister to stop this ecocide, implementing the Italian and European legislation and the international commitments made by Italy in the context of the UN Convention on BIological Diversity and the UN Decade for the restoration of ecosystems. Furthermore, we ask the Minister of Ecological Transition Cingolani and the Minister of Agricultural, Food and Forestry Policies Stefano Patuanelli to see us to understand how MITE and Mipaas intend to defend the biodiversity and agriculture of an island that is more than half protected by a Park. National and that, despite this, in 25 years it has suffered enormous and perhaps irreparable losses of animal and vegetable species and agricultural crops due to the introduction and hunting management of wild boar outside the Park and of the mouflons introduced before the establishment of the Park .
We ask the European Commissioner for the Environment, Oceans and Fisheries Virginijus Sinkevičius, the European Commissioner for Agriculture Janusz Wojciechowski and the Environment Directorate of the European Union to carefully check the depletion of biological, agricultural and biodiversity resources on the Island of Elba that the SPA / SAC and EU regulations should have defended, as well as the application of the new Biodiversity Directive, in particular as regards the protection of habitats and island species and the fight against invasive species. We also ask that the possibility of opening an infringement procedure be evaluated for the lack of protection of the SPAs / SACs of the Island of Elba determined by the hunting policies of the Tuscany Region and by the absence of intervention by the Italian governments up to now. (Here News Elba).