With a 15% increase in wild boars forcovid emergency which for months reduced the circulation of vehicles on rural roads and in the city, the first regional act that allows farmers to advance intervention request and to proceed directly to their own funds as they have a specific hunting license. This is what he says Coldiretti Puglia, positively commenting on the approval of the resolution of the Regional Council of Puglia to counter the proliferation of wild boars which will find full functionality with the approval by the Puglia Region of the Strategic Environmental Assessment of the Wildlife Hunting Plan.
The flocks - underlines the regional Coldiretti - push themselves ever closer to homes and schools, up to the parks where children play, destroy crops, attack animals, besiege stables, cause road accidents with deaths and injuries and scratching through the garbage with dangers for the health and safety of people. The provision of the Regional Council, strongly supported by Coldiretti and proposed by the Regional Councilor for Agriculture, Donato Pentassuglia, provides, among other things, that the coordination of the containment and collection actions is the responsibility of the local and provincial police, with the farmers who will be assisted by the police themselves, by voluntary hunting guards but can delegate the activities to licensed hunters registered in the appropriate regional register, following the hunting calendar, it is extended to include the months from September to January. The overall direction of these containment and withdrawal actions - adds Coldiretti Puglia - will be entrusted to the prefect as he is "competent for the protection of public order and security".
The situation has become unsustainable in the countryside with damage to at least 15 million euros per year to agricultural production but - Coldiretti Puglia points out - the environmental balance of vast territorial ecosystems in areas of naturalistic value is also compromised with the loss of both animal and plant biodiversity. Without to forget the danger of the spread of diseases highlighted by the same Surveillance and Prevention Plan for 2021 published by the Ministry of Health which reiterates how wild boars have a fundamental responsibility for the spread of African swine fever (Psa) and therefore one of the necessary measures in Italy is the numerical management of the population of these animals.
Therefore, the action according to the Plan - continues Coldiretti Puglia - must be addressed to both numerical and spatial reduction through hunting activities, control actions of law 157/92 article 19 and programmable actions in the network of protected areas. There are those who have found a wild boar in the pool, those who have crossed them in the sea and also those - insists there Coldiretti Puglia - he photographed them enjoying their siesta on an abandoned mattress next to the garbage cans. The wild boars - underlines Coldiretti - have taken possession of the territory of the protected areas and have also gone into the inhabited centers with reports in towns and cities, as well as in cultivated areas. In danger - concludes Coldiretti - there are not only the agricultural productions necessary to satisfy the food demand of citizens but also the safety of people which in some territories are besieged right up to the doorstep, without forgetting road accidents and the dangers for emergency vehicles.