Too many specimens
Historic green light also to farmers and breeders who own funds for the slaughter of wild boars that have multiplied in Puglia reaching 250 specimens that dominate the city and the countryside, jeopardize people's safety, cause road accidents with deaths and injuries, devastate crops and are dangerous spreaders of diseases such as the wild boar plague. This is what Coldiretti Puglia says, with reference to the resolution approved by the Council of the Puglia Region, for which the applause goes to the regional councilor for agriculture Donato Pentassuglia, who gave the green light to the implementing regulation for the numerical control of the wild boar population throughout Puglia, to be implemented also in the areas of the Alta Murgia and Gargano National Parks and all protected natural areas.
The regional measure
With the provision adopted by the Regional Council of Puglia, strongly backed by Coldiretti, the owners and conductors of agricultural funds located in the region, in possession of a regular firearms license for hunting use on their land, are authorized to hunt wild boars. "We ask that the provision be implemented in its entirety within the Protected Natural Areas and that the "Extraordinary plan for the management and containment of wildlife" be immediately implemented by the Puglia Region, also within the Protected Natural Areas, in order to no longer grant "safe spaces" to wild boars which, today, use these areas as "dormitories and breeding areas", given that food is guaranteed by agricultural production just outside the boundaries of the Parks", insists Pietro Piccioni, director of Coldiretti Puglia. With Puglia invaded by 250 thousand wild animals there is not only the plague of wild boars, but there is alarm - adds Coldiretti Puglia - for the safety of people in the countryside and in the city with the herds that go as far as urban centres, among parked cars , prams with children and the elderly who go shopping, with the areas of the Murgia of Bari and Taranto, the Gargano and the Dauno sub-Apennines having become the Eldorado of wild boars.
Herds too menacing
The herds of wild boars - underlines Coldiretti - move ever closer to homes and schools, up to parks, destroy crops, attack animals, besiege stables, cause road accidents with deaths and injuries and scavenge through waste with obvious risks for Health. The situation has become unsustainable in the city and in the countryside with incalculable economic damage to agricultural production but - underlines Coldiretti - the environmental balance of vast territorial ecosystems in areas of naturalistic value is also compromised with the loss of both animal and vegetable biodiversity. It is - highlights the regional Coldiretti - only the tip of the iceberg because many do not report discouraged by the bureaucratic delays and by the conditions imposed by the insurance companies such as, for example, in addition to the traces on the car and on the asphalt, also the discovery of the animal's carcass with which we collided.
Damage to wildlife
According to the Coldiretti/Ixè survey, wildlife represents a problem for the vast majority of citizens (90%) considering that in the last year an accident has occurred every 41 hours with 13 victims and 261 seriously injured due to the invasion of wild boars and wild animals that stop at nothing, according to Coldiretti's analysis of Asaps data. In Puglia the damage caused by wildlife is enormous, with wild boars destroying crops and attacking men and farmed animals - Coldiretti Puglia denounces - as well as wolves and dogs that have gone wild, starlings reset the production of olives and destroy the pitches, the hares literally devour entire fields of vegetables, the cormorants eat the fish in the aquaculture plants, with damage equal to over 16 million euros. Farmers are fencing off farms at their own expense with considerable costs to defend themselves from wild boars that destroy structures and productions. It is an unsustainable situation - insists the regional Coldiretti - which is causing the abandonment of internal areas, with social, economic and environmental problems.
Extraordinary measures
When asked who should solve the problem, over half of the citizens (53%) are of the opinion that it is up to the Regions, while for 25% it is the Government's task and 22% is up to the Municipalities. In this scenario, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has also launched an appeal to the Member States of the European Union asking for extraordinary measures to prevent wild boars from having access to food and reduce the number of animals to limit the risk of spreading the disease. African swine fever (ASF) which affects animals but not humans. The majority of citizens consider the excessive presence of wild animals a real national emergency that affects people's safety as well as the economy and work, especially in the most disadvantaged areas, concludes Coldiretti in underlining the need for targeted interventions and on a large scale to reduce the wild boar threat nationwide.