To counter i damage caused by wild boars crops and some components of the ecosystem la Province of Trento has adopted, for several years now, a control discipline that aims to implement more incisive actions than normal hunting practice. The current regulations are based on the subdivision of Trentino into two large areas, the so-called zero-density zone and the classified containment zone.
In the first, the wild boar is absent and, as soon as it appears, the surveillance staff of the Trentino Forestry Corps and that of the Hunters Association, as the hunting organization, intervene to counteract its settlement in the bud. In the second area, on the other hand, the hunters authorized to control have the task of keeping the level of a now settled population low. The discipline has been modified several times, again through discussions with the Trentino Hunters Association, with the aim of making it more effective.
With a new resolution, proposed by the councilor Julia Zanotelli, the Provincial Government has today modified the one launched last year which had already rearranged the matter with a view to simplifying administrative procedures and, consequently, to improve efficiency, introducing some innovations that start from the awareness of the threat posed by African Swine Fever (ASF). ASF is a highly contagious serious viral disease affecting wild boars and pigs, currently spreading to several Eastern European countries. It is not a disease that can be transmitted to humans, but in the areas where it arrives it has very serious economic repercussions on the pig sector. For this reason there is a national plan of containment and radical elimination, which it supports the importance of containing the density of wild boars as a method of prevention.
The control discipline in force in the Province, if correctly applied, therefore also lends itself to the pursuit of this objective. The main innovations introduced by the new resolution include the extension of ordinary control throughout the year and that of allowing the use of night vision devices. The wild boar, in fact, is species with crepuscular habits and evening control activity and nocturnal will benefit from the use of such devices. The new discipline received the approval of both the Wildlife Observatory and the Higher Institute for Environmental Protection and Research.