Hunting at night and doing so with the bow is a risk not only for the protected fauna, but also for people. The WWF Abruzzo he says he is "disconcerted" by the provisions of the disciplinary approved by the junta for the wild boar selection hunting which received the favorable opinion of Ispra (Higher Institute for Environmental Protection and Research). The disciplinary provides that ungulates can be hunted until midnight even with the bow and through the use of light sources such as infrared viewers, term viewers, torches and headlights. A wrong policy, once again, for the WWF because the really "disconcerting" thing, he writes in a note, "is the fact that hunting (selection and otherwise) continues to be considered as the only instrument of containment of boar damage, without hypothesizing and planning on a large scale any other action that goes with the aim of making agricultural crops safe or reducing the risk of impact with motor vehicles.
The periods and methods of harvesting the wild boar that can now be hunted practically all year round and with any hunting methodology, but the hoped-for results on the containment of populations are certainly not seen ”. "Night hunting should also be carefully evaluated for the risk of disturbance it can cause to the rest of the wildlife, especially at this time. when the breeding season is not yet completely over and its danger to citizens ", comments the association which remembers having organized a conference on wild boar management together with the University of Teramo last February, bringing to the attention of the public about 80 scientific publications, regarding the impact of hunting on the population structure of the wild boar.
Conference during which, citing some studies, it was found that if it is true that the wild boar hunt is the first death hunt for the animal, it is also true that this has so far proved useless for its containment without considering that this acts on the different sex and age classes in a different way from natural mortality with the effect of decreasing the average life expectancy of animals and rejuvenating populations. Another study demonstrates how hunting triggers responses in the reproductive biology of the species which, together with the increased trophic availability, cause an increase in the productivity of the populations, continues the WWF and that in any case hunting has consequences on the demography of the hunted populations can also influence the spatial behavior of family groups as the loss of a dominant female can lead to greater spatial instability among surviving individuals.
There would then be a sort of compensatory response on the part of the species: the more you hunt, the more females give birth during the year, which is not the case where the hunting activity is limited. Finally, there is a study that has found that even selective killing from a fixed point can perturb the population structure enough to upset the mating, the fecundity and the relationship between the sexes of the offspring that can be upset. "Basically, dozens of scientific studies have shown that hoping to reduce the number of wild boars by relying exclusively on hunting is wrong and illusory, yet the regional council - concludes Filomena Ricci, WWF Abruzzo delegate - continues to intervene on the management of the wild boar in a chaotic way, increases the hunting periods during the year and the day, expands the possibilities of hunting methods by also resorting to the bow, a technique never used in Abruzzo.
In short, it seems that we proceed by giving gifts to hunters without being aware of the fact that this type of management in place for decades it is not having the desired result. It is time for the problem to be tackled with data and scientific evidence in hand and for experimentation other types of intervention on the territory, known and practicable, for the safety of agricultural fields and linear infrastructures "(Il Pescara).