La Piedmont region wants to speed up the startup of killing of wild boars and make them more effective. In days, the African swine fever containment plan will be sent to Ispra for approval. It will concern the infected area and, above all, the area between the highways A7, A26 and the Predosa-Bettole link road and will only involve the use of selection hunting to kill wild boars. Turin, however, intends to expand the control area extended to 44 Alexandrian municipalities within a radius of ten kilometers from the border of the infected zone.
«The goal - explains the regional councilor Marcus Protopapa - is to carry out the killing of wild boars in this area with teams of hunters and limieri dogs in order to have higher numbers. The selection hunting foreseen in the infected area allows to kill few specimens since i there aren't many controllers available". The enlargement of the control area should be included in an ordinance that the Region will issue in a few days together with the sending of the Plan to Rome, in order to speed up the start of the culls. «80% of wild boars to be killed - continues the commissioner - requested by the European Commission it is a difficult result to achieve with the rules imposed in the infected area.
For this reason, in the control area we also foresee night killing with the use of thermal imaging cameras". In the meantime, the interregional emergency commissioner, Angelo Ferrari, has entered the full capacity of his duties and tomorrow he will meet the Piedmont and Liguria Regions in Campo Ligure. "It will be an opportunity - adds Protopapa - to understand his strategies and understand what can really be done to deal with the emergency". Meanwhile, the commissioner denies that the expense for the maxi fence (275 kilometers) imposed by the European Commission amounts to 150 million euros: "There has not yet been any estimate, with the mayors we must better evaluate the layout of the fence area by area" (The print).