Hunting and Fauna: Tuscany, the objective law for the management of ungulates arrives; but how will it work?
The Region will work to prepare a specific objective law on the management of wild ungulates. Roe deer, boars, fallow deer and red deer in Tuscany are proliferating and causing a series of serious problems for maintaining the natural balance of the territory, for crops and for road safety.
“For this reason, pending the hoped-for modification of the law on hunting 157/1992 or an ad hoc regulatory provision at national level for wild ungulates, we want to intervene immediately for a wildlife-hunting management that concretely protects agriculture and the environmental balance of our territory ", said the regional councilor to the Marco Remaschi agriculture.
“Considerable and no longer bearable - continues Remaschi - are the damage to agricultural crops, in particular to those of value typical of Tuscany, for example the vine. Often the loss of product causes the farm also a loss of the market, as it is unable to meet the requests, and at that point the indemnities are also valid, which refer only to the loss of that moment and which, in this case, they are indeed to be considered a negative use of resources, whether public or private. Added to this are the increasingly frequent collisions with vehicles, sometimes unfortunately with serious consequences, as has again occurred in recent days. In short, a situation on which it is necessary to intervene promptly ”.
The objective law. It will be valid for a limited time, approximately three years, to allow verification of the results obtained. It will have to foresee measurable parameters such as the density of ungulates in sample areas and the incidence of damage, always in clearly identified areas. A discussion in the State / Regions Conference will be requested. National scientific institutes such as ISPRA (Ministry of the Environment) and CIRSEMAF (Interuniversity Center for Faunal Studies) will be involved for monitoring, which will carry out a survey and an impartial reading of the data.
A plan of interventions will therefore be outlined which will see the review of the so-called "suitable" and "non-suitable" areas in the next Regional Wildlife Hunting Plan where the validity of the Ispra "guidelines" will be foreseen for the suitable areas. For the so-called problematic areas, management methods will be identified which, while following the Ispra "guidelines", may provide, depending on the density and levels of risk, for additional withdrawal methods.
It will also be proposed that the control of the fauna can be activated even in the absence of damage, at the request of the farmer when he believes, given the presence of ungulates, that his crops are at risk. In the protected areas of regional / provincial competence, a methodology for containing the redundant animals must be provided, to standardize the intervention on the whole regional territory, which must be managed in an overall manner, without leaving areas where the species can proliferate undisturbed.
On the sidelines of this regulatory intervention, the management of ungulate meat will also be taken into account, for which at this point it is advisable to create a supply chain (with possible regional PDO) for the marketing of at least part of the game meat, in great demand on the market.
Ungulate problem, the numbers in Tuscany. Tuscany has a record density for the number of ungulates per square kilometer, making it the European region with the largest number of ungulates, lower only than some areas of Austria. In fact, around 200.000 roe deer, as many wild boars, 8.000 fallow deer and 4.000 are estimated in our region deer, we are practically the European region with the greatest presence of these species.
This is also due to the particular conformation of the territory, covered by woods and forests for 60%, as well as the particularly favorable environmental quality for the fauna and in particular for the ungulates. In recent years, damage caused by wild boar alone accounted for about 60% of total damage, while damage from ungulates generally accounted for 88% of total liquidated damage.
As regards the wild boar species, it is believed that the estimate is at least equivalent to double the culling of the period, therefore about 200 thousand head. So the estimated load of ungulates amounts to over 400 thousand heads. Damage to agricultural crops caused by fauna has been increasing in recent years.
(10 September 2015)
Source: Toscana News
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