- parasitological studies they are fully included among the health checks necessary to correctly manage the populations of the Leporidae and wildlife more generally. Controls should not be occasional, as is often the case in Italy, but they should be subject to periodic monitoring to promptly identify, for example, the emergence of new pathologies that are dangerous for the conservation of species and / or the health of man himself. The dramatic COVID-19 pandemic it shows us how dangerous the so-called “emerging” pathologies from the world of wild animals can be.
As part of the projects activated by theFaunistic and Agro-Environmental Studies and Research Office of Federcaccia since 2017 collaborations have been promoted with the University of Palermo, the University of Pisa, the Region of Sicily and the Region of Tuscany aimed, among other things, at the study of parasites of European hare in the province of Grosseto and of the Italic hare in some Sicilian provinces.
Thanks to the availability of numerous hunters, various samples were collected which made a fundamental contribution to the research activities. The first important results have been the subject of a recent one Master's degree thesis in Conservation and Evolution by Dr. Erica Romi at the University of Pisa and will be published in a specialized scientific journal (Faunistic and Agro-Environmental Studies and Research Office Federcaccia).