In September 2019, a group of international experts in animal movement ecology met at the Edmund Mach Foundation to develop an ambitious idea: to document for the first time all the migration routes of the large terrestrial herbivores, the ungulates. Today that idea has become an initiative officially supported by the United Nations that brings together nearly a hundred conservation scholars and biologists from all over the world. The Global Initiative for Ungulate Migration (GIUM) is presented in these days in the prestigious journal Science. The availability of a world atlas of migration will make it possible to identify the areas and corridors of passage of ungulates during these important movements. Scientists, conservation biologists and decision makers will have a fast and dynamic tool to develop and adopt mitigation solutions that can preserve the fundamental migratory behavior of ungulates. Thanks to the Atlas, for example, it will be possible to locate the key points where to build 'green bridges' on the major communication routes, or to open fences during the migratory period and still connect protection areas with 'green corridors'.
For this reason, the initiative had the official partnership of the United Nations Convention for the Conservation of Migratory Species of the Fauna (CMS). “We are at the beginning of an epochal effort, but the coordination between experts and the support of the United Nations make it possible and of great impact”, comments dr. Francesca Cagnacci of the FEM Research and Innovation Center, second name on the article and organizer of the meeting in San Michele. The Commentary of Science (https://science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi/10.1126/science.abf0998) cites astonishing displacements of hundreds of kilometers, such as those of the Mongolian gazelle or the saiga in Asia, the Thompson's gazelle and wildebeest in Africa, or reindeer and caribou in the Arctic, which are however interrupted and limited by newly built roads, mining plants, or border fences.
Dramatically, for many ungulates the migration routes are not yet known (for example, the guanaco in Argentina), which thus risk disappearing even before being traced. Continental Europe also offers important insights, being the first continent to have profoundly transformed its territory: "The red deer is capable of moving many tens of kilometers in a few days, as in the Stelvio Park in Trentino, but often becomes a resident and locally overpopulated in fragmented European environments ”. “During the meeting in 2019 in FEM we formalized the idea and thought of organizing a conference to which we would like to invite scholars from all over the world on this topic. Although obviously the conference was postponed, the pandemic did not stop us: we contacted our colleagues and collaborated with each other with dozens of online meetings, identifying the creation of a World Atlas of Ungulate Migrations as our priority "reports dr Cagnacci .
"We began to develop a digital structure to receive, process and publish the displacement data obtained from GPS collars and, when these have not yet been used, from the knowledge of local experts, but we also discussed the central motivation of our initiative. : the risk of ungulate migrations disappearing due to human impact ”continues prof. Matt Kauffman, of the University of Wyoming, first coordinator of the initiative. Ungulates are primary consumers, meaning they feed on plant resources. At the same time, they fertilize the soil and transport nutrients and energy and represent the main prey of large predators, thus playing a fundamental ecosystem role. For millennia they have been linked to the culture and identity of human populations, with hunting and pastoralism. "Without migrations of ungulates - points out Cagnacci -, many ecosystem services would be compromised and we can expect a collapse of biodiversity linked to them at different levels of complexity, from the microbiota, to large carnivores, up to interaction with domestic animals" (Rare World).