Continuous movements
Road accidents are increasing, even serious ones, due to wild boars, but there is also a red alert in the countryside with the raids of entire packs in search of food and water, which, moving from one territory to another, covering up to 40 kilometers at a time, devour crops and also damage irrigation systems in the fields. This is what was stated by Coldiretti Puglia, in relation to the approval by the Puglia Regional Council of the extraordinary regional plan for the management and containment of wild fauna in Puglia, starting with the wild boar species ('Sus scrofa'), strongly supported by Coldiretti which also applied pressure with the demonstration of thousands of farmers under the Regional Palace.
Data from the Asaps Observatory
In Puglia, there were 3 deaths in 2023, but there are hundreds of road accidents per year caused by wild boars with the drivers involved who do not report the accident knowing that they will hardly be reimbursed for the damages, according to an estimate by Coldiretti Puglia based on the data from the Asaps Observatory during the mobilization in Bari. A real emergency that puts the safety and health of motorists at risk due to the presence of wild animals and wild boars, which can weigh up to 150 quintals and be 83 centimeters long. A fear – Coldiretti Puglia highlights – that spreads from the hills to the plains, from the areas near the basins to those on the sea, but in small provincial towns with less than five thousand inhabitants it even rises to XNUMX% of residents.
Extraordinary plan
The extraordinary plan - which concerns all wild fauna, with particular attention to wild boars - will accompany the PRIU, which the Puglia Region has been equipped with since 2022, adapting it to national regulations, in a joint effort between the regional department of Agriculture and the Environment, with the system of regional and national parks and Natura 2000 Networks, the representatives of farmers, gathered around a coordination table with consultative and proactive functions in matters of management and containment of wild fauna, with the tasks of examining the achievement of targets for the mitigation of impacts and potential risks caused by the Sus scrofa species on human activities, the environment and biodiversity, and of reconnaissance of the activities implemented by the management bodies of national and regional parks.
The areas most at risk
With Puglia invaded by 250 thousand wild boars, there is not only the plague of wild boars, but it is an alarm for the safety of people in the countryside and cities with packs that push right into urban centers, among parked cars, strollers with children and elderly people going to do the shopping, with the areas of the Murgia barese and tarantina, of the Gargano and of the Daunia sub-Apennines - insists Coldiretti Puglia - become the Eldorado of wild boars that devastate the crops devouring Altamura lentils. grass peas, broad beans, chickpeas and peas, broccoli, vegetables, newly sown seedlings of fava beans and wheat, grapes especially on espalier vines, fruit shaking the trees, all the undergrowth and the biodiversity of the woods and parks.
Wildlife damage
In Puglia, the damage caused by wild fauna is enormous, with wild boars destroying crops and attacking humans and farm animals, as well as feral wolves and dogs, starlings wiping out olive production and destroying pitches, hares literally devouring entire fields of vegetables, cormorants eating fish in aquaculture plants, green parrots feeding on fruit and almonds and the killer of the seas, the blue crab, which exterminates clams, mussels, eggs, other fish and molluscs, with an overall estimated damage of over 30 million euros (source: Coldiretti Puglia).
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