A long and expensive fence
In the month of January 2022, an outbreak of African Swine Fever was discovered in a territory, already quite large at the time, between the provinces of Genoa and Alessandria, damaging the population of wild boars present in the area. The portion of territory initially affected by the PSA it was almost entirely represented by the Ligurian-Piedmontese Apennine profile characterized by impervious mountains and now abandoned and almost impenetrable woods. The hunting world, after having learned the first rudimentary notions about the new and unknown disease, promptly understood that the methods of intervention aimed at depopulating the wild boar for the eradication of the disease, already tested in other European contexts, would have been poorly effective on this territory. Unfortunately, but also understandably, the first commissioner structure correctly appointed by the Government to deal with this emergency did not listen to the doubts expressed by the hunting world, attempting to contain the ASF with methods already tested in profoundly different foreign territorial contexts. An emblematic example is the construction of a very long and very expensive fence, which obviously, given the complex geography of the environment concerned, failed in any way to contain the disease and, if it was not harmful, it was certainly useless.
Trend reversal
In this first phase, the requests from the hunting world aimed at containing the wild boar population through a targeted but important culling campaign were not heeded. The second commissioner structure, with an important reversal of trend, has understood the usefulness of a widespread depopulation plan through the direct involvement of hunters. The hunting world, after the first hesitations, placed itself completely at the disposal of the commissioner structure, carrying out the depopulation activity in the most effective way possible. An activity which, in the Ligurian case, made it possible to stop the advance of the epidemic in the western part of the Region (Province of Savona) and to contain it in the eastern part (Province of La Spezia). Unfortunately, in this second reality, the absolute immobility of the neighboring Emilia-Romagna Region has meant that the disease has returned to the Province of La Spezia from this poorly monitored border.
Current situation
The Ligurian hunting world, after having carried out all the tasks assigned to it, namely the monitoring of the territory for the search for carcasses, participation in biosecurity courses, the implementation of works to prepare the "hunting lodges" for storage of the animals killed, the participation in countless interventions to depopulate the wild boar species with the delivery of the spoils for destruction, begins to show a bit of tiredness and perplexity. The reasons are multiple:
– the observation that the PSA, despite these important efforts, has continued to make progress in the area;
– the presence of other outbreaks (Lazio, Campania, Calabria, Basilicata) certainly not connected to the local one, but of clear anthropic origin (food waste, imports of uncontrolled foodstuffs and more);
– the lack of economic contributions aimed at encouraging depopulation activities (unlike other situations in neighboring provinces where contributions were made in proportion to the animals killed);
– the difficulty in removing animals killed in inaccessible territories without any compensation, as they, in infection zone II, are all destined for destruction;
– the lack of prospects for the future.
This disaffection is demonstrated by the extremely worrying data that in ATC 1 in the Province of Genoa alone, in the 2023-24 hunting season, we had a drop of over a thousand members, all interested exclusively in wild boar hunting. Furthermore, it is necessary to point out that currently infection zone II covers the entire Province of Genoa and part of the Province of Savona for a total territorial extension of over 250.000 hectares which, if added to those of the nearby Province of Alessandria, reach almost 400.000, to which, if we also add the more recent ones of Lombardy, Emila Romagna and now also Tuscany with the Province of Massa, we obtain an enormous surface without interruption. In this immense territory, in which the ASF has claimed many victims, but has not eradicated the wild boar species, the hunting effort to eliminate the survivors and eradicate the ASF is enormously more burdensome and the constant decline in interested hunters does not make it very effective. Likewise, in some areas where ASF passed first, about two years ago and where the wild boar population seemed to have disappeared, we are witnessing a natural repopulation through osmosis from other neighboring territories, where ASF did not pass, with the risk that the population rearranges itself and recovers numerically by recolonizing the territory.
The trust of the hunting world
In this worrying scenario, it is believed that it is essential to reverse the trend and block the disaffection of hunters since otherwise we risk having to face a battle without troops. Certainly the forecasts of contributions to encourage sampling activities could be useful, but above all to recover the trust of the hunting world it would be necessary to foresee the self-consumption of animals killed even in infection zone II. Obviously when we talk about self-consumption it is implicit that this can only be taken into consideration with compliance with all the necessary biosafety precepts, i.e. placing the slaughtered animals in cold storage, taking samples for the necessary analyses, waiting for the analytical results, tracing of animals and meat, exclusive consumption within the infection zone II. Today the teams from the provinces of Genoa and Savona are in a position to do all this, as they have equipped themselves with structures to store the animals, have participated in courses and learned how to take samples to be sent for analysis, and carry out the banding and the tracking of meat. Many of them carried out this activity without any problems for over a year when their hunting territories were still in infection zone I and self-consumption was allowed.
Final considerations
The enormous size, as mentioned above, of infection zone II would allow such meat to be consumed inside without any risk of being moved outside, but if it were deemed useful the hunters could sign a self-certification with which they could commit to consuming such meat only and exclusively within that area, after mandatory cooking. It could also be envisaged to limit self-consumption in the oldest and most internal infection zones II compared to the enormous area now compromised, where the disease has now been present for almost two years. Wild boar hunting as it has been carried out for over fifty years will no longer exist for a long time or perhaps never and the hunters are aware of this, but to continue to motivate them in the depopulation activity they must be involved in an activity that is the most possible similar to what he has always liked to do, that is, hunting and self-consumption is an essential part of it. We therefore trust that this request will be accepted because, otherwise, I fear that many hunters will stop and the protection of the territory will no longer be able to be guaranteed, with the concrete risk that, when the wild boar population begins to reconsolidate (as has happened in all the other European states affected by the PSA), we will no longer have anyone who can contain them.