Wild boar emergency in Piedmont.
Farmers and shepherds wake up in the morning and find the lawn as if it had been plowed. The clods of earth turned upside down, patches of brown among the blades of grass. One night after another, the whole field ends up being battered and goodbye grazing: there is no longer a place to feed the herds of cattle and it is not even possible to mow the grass for make hay for the winter. And the same goes for cultivated fields: devoured corn cobs, seeds and tubers dug out of the earth. There are now many Piedmontese municipalities that come to terms with damage caused by wild boars, the number of which has doubled in the last dozen years: they were 500 thousand throughout Italy in 2010 and there are one million today, according to the most reliable estimates.
The Piedmontese ask for urgent measures with appropriate demolition orders
In Piemonte there are about 100 thousand and meetings in the Region have increased - next today - to address the problem. "We had never seen such a phenomenon: there are wild boars that also go digging in the children's gardens: we ask that urgent measures be taken with appropriate killing ordinances or we will lose those who have decided to keep activities in the mountains alive ”, is the request made to the Piedmont Region and the Metropolitan City of Turin by Adriano Bonad Bottino, first citizen of Chialamberto. Many mayors have signed orders for the culling of ungulates, but these are permissions that have no effect: hunters for various reasons do not always seize the opportunity of new permits to shoot, while the zoophile guards are too few to keep up with the slaughter plan envisaged by Ispra, which is 38 head.
The solution: wild boar hunting in Piedmont all year round.
«However, there are few to significantly reduce the ungulate population - says the regional councilor for the mountains Fabio Carosso - In any case, we have in mind an additional budget of one and a half million euros to hire new zoophile guards. But I believe that however, the solution is to extend wild boar hunting throughout the year. And we need to provide clear rules why the proceeds from the sale of the slaughtered wild boars go to the damaged farmers". The damage to agriculture and pastoralism is enormous: «A field battered by rooting wild boars drags on for years because the roots of the plants are turned upwards, even with serious damage to biodiversity.
And it takes a long time before something grows again ", explains Luca Battaglini, zootechnician of the Disafa department of the University of Turin. "We need a serious plan to kill wild boars, clear to everyone, without too many bureaucratic steps: the problem is national", says Roberto Colombero, president Uncem Piedmont, which together with the national president Marco Bussone met the mayors of the Canavese in recent days. Sergio Barone, councilor Coldiretti Turin launched his proposal: "To stop wild boars we need a new national law that allows farmers to hunt them when they root their funds".