This time I want to put the finger in the eye of all those who, in front of thewild boar emergency, they know how to indicate only one responsible: the bad hunter, who in the 50s imported from the Balkans and placed in our woods, for hunting and repopulation purposes, some specimens of boars Danubians, large in size, much more prolific than ours.
So I have it with fellow journalists and uninformed television presenters and followers of the single thought, of veterinarians who, in order to appear on TV, are willing to dress the most sensational crap with science. We have just seen it at Uno Mattina where our Director was invited to show the public what the presence of 18 hunters a year means and how useful it is for the environment and wildlife. The vet who had the task of explaining the deviant behaviors of our dog friends and of the feral pigs in the Sicilian parks interrupted Cusimano's intervention and launched into an tirade against bad hunters and in defense of the Asian lion that no one hunts! But what is worse, the conductor accomplice, paid by all of us, let him do it.
I have it with environmentalists and animal rights activists who continue to blame hunters for everything, even the heat, fires and lead pollution, except for the few enlightened ones such as Wilderness, Federparchi as well as some humanistic fringe of Legambiente, who recognize good hunting has a rebalancing function of the dynamics of the species. But let's go back to the wild boar emergency. True, after the war there was a desert. The wild boars, in those few Tyrrhenian areas and in Calabria where they had always been, had been decimated by the hunger of the people, not by the hunters. This is the reason for the repopulations of the 50s. But then the environment, as we know, shapes the species: in our thick spots the tapered grunts of the surviving local wild boars had an easier game, so that after 50 years there is no trace of the gigantic Balkans. Yes, that's right, our boar is a little bigger today and has more children. But that is not the cause of the misadventures in which some people attacked and injured by wild boars have incurred and of the fatal road accidents caused by herds that scurry along state roads at night.
A cause? One of the many, but perhaps the most unprecedented: The grazing period caused by the rise in temperature which increased the food capacity (acorns, chestnuts and other fruits of the forest) and therefore doubled the parts in the year. The abandonment of crops and the increase in wooded areas where other old and new guests have appeared such as deer, roe deer, fallow deer and mouflons which, if not controlled by careful and selective hunting, can cause damage not only to human work and damage to road safety, but limit the development of forests. And most of all, the deer. Which have been released throughout Italy by the Forestry of Tarvisio. Years ago, an entire herd that roamed the Brunello vineyards was exterminated by the disasters it was causing. There it was not a question of vile corn, but of a wine from 40 euros (base price) per bottle! I'm amazed that they didn't take it out on the hunters that time. Perhaps because the episode was kept secret because it would have created some problems for phony journalists, vain veterinarians, pitiful animal rights activists. Another cause? The parks, also known as "the mother of the boar". There they live undisturbed (except in those protected areas where selection hunting is planned). There they reproduce and take refuge after the nocturnal forays into agricultural crops. That is why they drive around in herds on the national roads causing accidents that are often fatal.
And who lives in a park? If you find them at home as aggressive cohabitants. I live in Rome on the border between the Parco di Veio and the Parco dell'Insugherata. The wild boars come out in the communal garden and graze in the meadows of the Acqua Traversa. Not at night, even in broad daylight blocking traffic because of people who suddenly stop to take pictures with their mobile phones.
The hunters? What do they have to do with it? I swear to you that they do everything they can to solve the problem, even when hunting is closed, in parks and where the provinces authorize selective killing, especially at the expense of females and young classes. Now for the first time I heard a word of common sense on the news. The head of environmental policies asks for the collaboration of hunters to solve the wild boar emergency But do you know what I tell you? Now, after so many years of accusations and persecutions, I would go on strike for a couple of years. Get by!
Bruno Modugno