After the forced stop cause covid of January 2021 which prevented its regular development in many areas, this year even though the problems caused by the pandemic and with significant defections by surveyors unable to participate, censuses of the wintering aquatic fauna managing to almost completely cover the affected areas, above all with less than optimal weather conditions (fogs and mists). In this activity, in which they participate volunteer ornithologists and birdwatchers with a regular license obtained after examination at ISPRA, once again several exponents of the hunting world belonging to ACMA-FIdC both with official detectors and with support staff who provided boats and vehicles to be able to adequately cover all areas. Furthermore, the knowledge of the territory of hunters is particularly useful in finding and detecting the presence of aquatic animals since often the detectors they come from other areas and have no thorough knowledge of daytime bird remittances.
In Italy there are important concentrations of water birds, mainly located along the north-east of the Adriatic belt, but in almost all regions there are areas affected by the wintering of this avifauna. To underline the almost absolute presence of many species in wildlife farms and in various areas managed by the hunting world, which creating, maintaining and expanding the environment as natural as possible and suitable allow the wintering of a variegated and quantitatively significant avifauna also, if not more, not affected by the collection. Some data to make the extent of the surveys and the importance of these areas perceptible.
In the lagoons of Venice and Caorle in five-year period 2016/2020 on average, over 500.000 aquatic birds were counted as wintering animals including nearly 200.000 teals, about 15.000 pochards, 10.000 white-fronted geese, over 60.000 mallards, nearly 20.000 pintails, over 30.000 shelducks and nearly 30.000 coots (Basso, 2020). Important numbers that, for these species and others, reach the threshold set by the Ramsar Convention for the conservation of wetlands. With regard to these results, it should be further highlighted that in recent years the economic and environmental effort sustained by hunters has also been directed towards recreating favorable habitats for species that for years have presented multiple environmental problems, in particular the pochard, which thanks to these initiatives (mainly of the valley growers), after years of not exactly optimal presences it is wintering with a marked positive trend of subjects. Finally, a sore point.
In detecting the presence ofwintering birdlife one cannot fail to notice the increasingly evident absence of species linked to cold climates while those of species linked to mild or even warm climates are increasing more and more. One for all: the flamingo. The presence of thousands of these birds wintering in the Venetian lagoons is an absolute novelty in recent years, so much so that there are no dialectal names or historical notes that refer to their usual presence in these areas. At the beginning of the third millennium in the censuses of the Venice lagoon it was practically absent, towards the end of the years 2007/2008 the first presences of some individuals began expanding from the southernmost Regions. Now, about fifteen years later, there are thousands of wintering flamingos (in 2019 almost 20.000 between the Venice lagoon and Caorle) and their cumbersome presence within these wetlands often creates pejorative changes to the seabed and competition with many species. (some in a bad state of conservation) who have always frequented these areas. This data is further confirmation that the climate of our planet is undergoing heavy variations (Source: Hunting Federation).