A few days ago the news of the discovery of a wild boar sick with African swine fever in an area north-west of Rome, which would testify to a dangerous "jump" of the disease several hundred kilometers from the first Italian outbreak, located in a large area between Liguria and Piedmont. The disease is absolutely harmless for humans while it is lethal in most cases for wild boars and pigs and this entails a very serious risk for pig farming and the related supply chain which, in the case of an expansion of the epidemic they would be devastated. Even the hunting world is likely to suffer the negative blows of this disease, in fact, in the red areas, or those where it is present, all outdoor activities are prohibited, including hunting in all its forms.
In the emergency, already from the early stages of defining the infected areas, the irreplaceable importance of hunters was highlighted both in the search and reporting of any carcasses and in the numerical containment of wild suidae, thus helping to slow down the infection. In Tuscany, the situation is calm even if, with an outbreak in the north and one in the south of our region, surveillance, as well as concern, is high. Also in our province the role of hunters and above all of boar hunting teams is and will be decisive: these organized groups of hunters in fact they live in our territory on a daily basis, even outside the hunting season, constituting real sentinels capable of immediately triggering the alarm in the event of the discovery of suspicious carcasses.
The teams also manage their hunting grounds by keeping the forest roads and paths accessible that allow you to reach them as well areas that are difficult to access. Maremma is the home of wild boar hunting in pursuit and over 100 teams still operate in the Grosseto area. The hunting activity helps to keep under control the number of wild boars present in the planned hunting areas: in Tuscany an average of 70000 wild boars are killed every year, of which about 80% through hunted hunting. In the ATC 7 Grosseto south, last year a total of about 7200 wild boars were killed, of which 6500 by the organized teams.
Even in the face of these aspects, however, hunters continue to be attacked with fake news and misleading articles which in many cases point to this category as responsible before the increase of wild boars in our country. when the numbers set out above and the situations that occur where no hunting is carried out (see the peri-urban area of Rome) testify to another story. A few days ago, in a meeting organized by the Confederation of Tuscan Hunters, the heads of the regional veterinary service met the hunting guards of the Federcaccia of Grosseto to give them the necessary information to activate the defense against the disease.
The hunters are ready and willing to give their contribution to face the ASF threat also in our region. We ask for legal certainty and contagion prevention measures that do not unnecessarily penalize our category. Wild boar hunting in Maremma is a reality that must be protected as a cultural component of our land and as its irreplaceable garrison.