60 head of deer killed and 15 head of wild boar. It is the balance sheet of the first year of implementation of the management and containment plans of these species implemented in the Pian di Spagna and Lake Mezzola Nature Reserve. Conducted in collaboration with the Provinces of Como and Sondrio and the related Provincial Police, the plans will also continue in the course of 2022 and 2023, with the planning of all related activities, including the involvement of operators and assistants who have passed the selections of the training course organized by the Reserve. The persons in charge and admitted will support the operations of the Provincial Police.
It will be essential - say the managing body of the protected area - to plan a careful scientific monitoring of the habitat surfaces and those suitable for maintenance and reproduction of water birds and those migratory that in recent years have suffered strong degradation actions due to the presence of wildlife. The maintenance of the open surfaces of the protected area is the indispensable prerequisite for being able to welcome the rest of the birds of passage in the best conditions and for this reason the managing body of the protected area takes care of the development of conditions that allow agricultural activity and the consequent maintenance of cultivated areas.
For this reason, the Reserve has prepared plans to contain the numbers of wild animals which, in 2021 alone, caused damage to crops for 33 thousand eurosruminants that consume up to 400 kg of vegetables per day are mainly responsible for damage to crops. In the cultivated fields, moreover, in addition to the action of picking up forage, the trampling action of the ground that the deer in the group cause during the walkways in the winter period and for the entrapment of the forage during the mowing period also constitutes a damage.
The reed belt is then the area of remittance, rest and shelter for large groups. Added to this are the damage caused by wild boar, not detected at the beginning of the season, but which they turned out to be more extensive over the course of the year. Also in this case, we speak not only of the loss of agricultural production but of damage to land (TELEUNICA).