The escalation of damages, assaults and accidents which unfortunately also cause casualties is the result of the uncontrolled proliferation of wild animals with the number of wild boars present in Puglia which has abundantly exceeded 250 thousand, with a diffusion that now extends from the countryside to the cities putting road safety at risk and around homes with a dramatic toll of human lives. To sound the alarm is the Coldiretti Puglia, with reference to the number of road accidents caused by wild animals that increasingly go into inhabited centers, with reports in towns and large cities as well as in cultivated areas.
In Puglia there are about 300 a year road accidents caused by wild animals, especially wild boars, which worsened in 2020 due to the long lockdown that emptied rural roads and cities, allowing for more free movement of wild animals. “We must act immediately and with determination with control and containment activities against the invasion of wild boars with continuous sightings in the areas of the Alta Murgia Park, of the Gargano, in the Murgia Barese and Tarantina, in the Dauno Sub-Apennines, near the Mercadante Forest, up to the urban centers ", says Savino Muraglia, president of Coldiretti Puglia.
Wild animals destroy agricultural crops, exterminate farmed animals, cause road accidents. But the health risks caused by the spread of diseases such as swine fever are also worrying. The situation in the rural areas of the Bari Murgia and in Capitanata is particularly serious and unmanageable, especially in the Gargano area where the habitat is particularly favorable. “This is an unsustainable situation that is causing the abandonment of internal areas by the population, with social, economic and environmental problems. Farmers but also motorists, road hauliers and occasional patrons are reporting with increasing frequency.
Damage caused by wild boars that live and reproduce mainly in protected natural areas but which, inevitably, they encroach on farms, on neighboring roads and in the vicinity of inhabited centers. In the province of Foggia they doubled within ten years, putting at risk not only agri-food production and the hydrogeological structure of the territory, but also the lives of farmers and motorists ”, denounces Pietro Piccioni, confederal delegate of Coldiretti Foggia. There unbridled proliferation of wild boars - concludes Coldiretti Puglia - is also putting at risk the environmental balance of vast territorial ecosystems even in areas of high naturalistic value.