Eight thousand and three hundred and fifty. Between Nogara, Isola della Scala and Gazzo Veronese, above all. For Corrado Pasini, president of the Tartar hunting area, «that of culled nutria in 2021 it is one of the highest numbers in recent years ". A number, that 8.350, which for the farmers' trade associations only re-proposes the theme of "incalculable damage»To the cultivation of the Bassa. Rodent native to South America, imported to Italy to breed it in order to produce furs then released in the countryside due market crisis and refusing to face the costs of culling, the nutria feeds on the buds of herbaceous and arboreal plants.
"Corn, soy, wheat, barley, the Bassa is a"perfect habitat"", Says the mayor of Nogara, Flavio Pasini, only namesake of the other aforementioned Pasini, who is the Municipality's shoulder in organizing a course which, end of January, will aim to inform the farmers of the area on the correct use of the catching cages. Let's talk about those farmers whose coypu regional control plan, valid until the end of 2025, renews the possibility of laying traps, in parallel with killing through capture or direct shooting by volunteer personnel such as trained hunters (whose hunts take place at night).
For the president of Coldiretti Verona, Alex Vantini, "initiatives to limit the nutria population, now out of control, which create damage both to the hydrogeological safety of the territory and to production are welcome: the otters raid the cultivated fields and vegetable gardens creating tunnels along the banks with a high hydraulic risk and fragility of the soil that causes it to collapse ». He hopes, the mayor of Nogara, that "the right use of trapping cages can be an almost decisive solution". Certainly that course will fall a year after a news that made the rounds of newspapers, that is the death of hundreds of animals in the naturalistic oasis of Busatello, in Gazzo Veronese, linked to the insecticides of a farmer from neighboring lands who, dictated "exasperated" by the otters, aimed only at them.
News that rekindled the radical opposition of animal rights associations with respect to the whole approach to the nutrie question. A question which, moreover, on the subject of abatements, inevitably extends to the disposal of carcasses. The regional plan authorizes it "in the field", up to a limit of ten animals per day per hectare. As well as renews the possibility of leaving the culled otters on the spot "if there is no reason to believe that they are contaminated with communicable diseases". And finally he cites, in rhyme with that national plan for the management of the coypu according to which "the capture in vivo through cages-traps remains the preferred method", article 13 of the EU Regulation 1069/2009 which, among the various techniques, provides for the incineration (Corriere del Veneto).