Hunting and Fauna: Ungulate fauna and environmental constraints, in-depth study on the issue of damage to agriculture by wild animals and on the problems of ungulate fauna.
Courtesy of the Accademia dei Georgofili, we propose again the interesting note by prof. Giovanni Bernetti, one of the most authoritative experts in forestry: A recent day of study on the damage from wildlife to agriculture has taken up a topic that has been treated and repeated for at least 30 years. Again, if anything, there was the level of insight. All this age-old question arose around 1970, after the observation that within the State Forests all the renewal of tree species was grazed and, in particular, that of the silver fir which, notoriously, is a species in a state of recession. This was, however, an internal story of the State Forests which, then, considered themselves free to promote biodiversity in the way they believed most appropriate, that is, without doing anything. Then the populations of wild animals became more numerous and began to trespass abundantly on private land, damaging the crops.
It is no longer a question of damages to be compensated individually; but these are continuous and repeated damages that no longer affect a single harvest, but the whole peaceful exercise of the right of ownership. The state, relying on biological equilibrium, introduced the wolf; but the wolf, like a good wolf, began to punctually eat the sheep, adding damage on damage. The Regions, on the other hand, act in a slightly more concrete way by providing contributions for the construction of fences and other defense works.
The possibility of reducing the numbers with is never considered hunting interventions properly regulated; wildlife, in fact, is untouchable because it is the most spectacular and emotional vehicle of propaganda for the protection of nature; it is the same reason why the cutting of trees is discouraged even for thinning.
The problem of damage from wildlife is therefore part of a much broader framework of a mindset that has extended its influence on private property by imposing, to protect the environment, landscape and nature, constraints that are too generalized, redundant and burdensome if not confiscators of income. These provisions were issued on the impulse of absolute confidence in the effects of biological equilibrium and on the indefinite duration of the opulent economy. Much has been facilitated by the abandonment of the mountains and the high hills and the consequent lack of interest of farmers' associations and trade unions.
Such is the level of abandonment that the National Forest Inventory of 2005 reports, for Italy, 5 million hectares of forest more than previous statistics and most of these are newly formed forests on crops withdrawn from operation . Anyone who trusts in indefinite well-being and deems production superfluous will have been happy. However, the heroes of solitude still produce: the rearguards of farmers or shepherds or the vanguards of idealistic pioneers. However, those who cut woody vegetation to restore a field even risk being charged with an environmental disaster. That's all.
Prof. Giovanni Bernetti
(10 July 2014)
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