Wild boar hunting in Tuscany. Invasion of wild boars? Not everyone agrees, at least in Garfagnana where, according to some hunting teams, catches have significantly decreased in this hunting season.
A fact that would also be corroborated by the fact that, in some areas, damage to agricultural land would also have decreased. The debate opens when trying to identify the cause. Did the wild boars get smart? THE hunters no longer have good aim? Or is there someone who comes first?
Hunting enthusiasts are for the third hypothesis: wild boars - they say - have decreased because wolves eat them. And here the investigation becomes complicated, also because there is no reliable data on the increase of wolves in the area. There have been wolves in Garfagnana for many years, apparently coming up from the mountains of Abruzzo. They are followed and studied by scientists from the Universities of Rome and Siena and also the National Park of the Appennino T keeps an eye on them with the “Wolf Appennine Center”.
If the numbers are stable, it seems difficult to think that the wolves this year have exterminated hundreds of wild boars. What if they were hybrids? Yes, because one of the phenomena of recent times is the presence in the woods of abandoned dogs, which become wild. Sometimes they mate with wolves (and here are the hybrids), other times they go wild and become aggressive.
The hypothesis would be supported by the fact that hunters say they have found carcasses of wild boars, goats, mouflons killed but not consumed, when the wolf, on the other hand, does not usually leave edible remains. Then there are those who say that wolves (or hybrids or wild dogs) would have been furious on puppies, which are easier to catch, thus blocking the normal restocking of wild boars.
Then there is the hypothesis of a different distribution of wild boars on the territory, perhaps moving to more inaccessible areas precisely to escape from predators. And then the climate, less cold than usual, which would have allowed the wild boars to remain in much higher areas. A final scenario speaks of food availability problems.
The debate, in the absence of scientific data, continues. And the investigation is one of the most intricate, also because in the face of the testimonies of hunters who say they have not found the classic signs of the passage of wild boars for kilometers, there are mountain enthusiasts who report the exact opposite.
(January 7, 2015)
Source: IlTirreno-Lucca