The article dedicated from American newspaper New York Times to Tuscan wild boars has provoked a series of inevitable reactions. Undoubtedly, one of the firmest is that of Una Foundation (Man Nature Environment) and its president Nicholas Perrotti. According to the number one of the non-profit organization, the excessive number of ungulates in many parts of Italy, primarily Tuscany, it is a real emergency and as such it requires some immediate and concrete solutions. Perrotti believes that the problem is seen and addressed abroad as an all-Italian anomaly, characterized by the absence of any useful coordination between the various representatives of the wildlife and environmental world.
The New York Times reference went to damage caused by wild boar to the Chianti vineyards, but obviously this is not the only negative consequence in this case. UNA Foundation hopes that there will be greater balance and pragmatism; moreover, the parties involved must begin to set aside the preconceived arguments and aim at practices to rebalance the presence of these animals on the territory. Perrotti wanted to underline the importance of a project followed by the non-profit organization, the identity card of wild ungulates, an idea that takes advantage of the collaboration of ISPRA, Legambiente, Italian Federation of Hunting and AnuuMigratoristi.
The foundation believes it is one of the concrete proposals to deal seriously with the emergency. How exactly does it work? The starting point is the Ungulate Data Bank (BDU) of ISPRA: the institute has already started in 1996 the start of the project for the creation of a database on the distribution, consistency and management of these wild animals in our country, a collection of the data currently available with regard to hunting, reintroductions and damage caused to productive activities by suidae, cervidae and bovidae. Each data is geo-referenced at different levels of aggregation, namely the management district, the Territorial Hunting Area, the Province and the Region, using a specific platform GIS (acronym indicating the Geographic Information System).
The areas of use could be extended to alien species, road accidents and the incidence of zoonoses, in order to have an even more precise and detailed picture. All the information, then, will be used for to create a sustainable supply chain for what concerns the marketing of the meat of wild ungulates for food purposes. The updating and collection of all data are however complex tasks: among other things, in fact, it is necessary to expand the consistencies and distributions of the species, with frequent updates of the knowledge bases and the fragmentation of management that provides for the involvement of park authorities, regions, provinces and wildlife-hunting companies.