In September 2019 a group of international experts in animal movement ecology met at the Edmund Mach Foundation to develop an ambitious idea: document for the first time all the migration routes of large terrestrial herbivores, 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, it will be possible, for example, to locate the key points where to build 'green bridges' on major communication routes, or 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 Convention for the Conservation of Migratory Species of Fauna (CMS) of the United Nations. “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 Research and Innovation Center FEM, second name on the article and organizer of the meeting in San Michele.
The Commentary of Science cites astonishing displacements of hundreds of kilometers, such as those of the Mongolian gazelle or the saiga in Asia, the Thompson's gazelle and the wildebeest in Africa, or the 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. Me too'Continental Europe 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 resident and locally overpopulated in the fragmented European environments ”.
“During the meeting in 2019 in FEM we formalized the idea and thought of organizing a conference to which to invite scholars from all over the world on this topic. Although the conference was obviously postponed, the pandemic hasn't stopped us: we contacted our colleagues and collaborated with each other with dozens of telematic meetings, identifying the creation of a World Atlas of Ungulate Migrations as our priority ”reports Dr. Cagnacci. “We have begun to develop a digital framework for receiving, processing and publishing the displacement data obtained from GPS collars and, when the latter have not yet been used, by the knowledge of local experts, but we also discussed the central motivation of our initiative: the risk that the migrations of ungulates disappear due to human impact ”continues prof. Matt Kauffman, of the University of Wyoming, first coordinator of the initiative.
Ungulates are primary consumers, i.e. 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 coating 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 ".