Wild boar: Damages for almost 60 thousand euros to farms in the province in 2010: over 1.000 animals were killed. Specchiarelli: "We will also focus on fences to prevent the phenomenon."
Varese - "Whoever says that the wild boar is a stupid animal, has never seen a cornfield attacked by a herd: the wild boar enters, eats the base of the stem of the falling plant, and so he devours the cobs".
Result: damages for almost 60 thousand euros in the province (only for wild boars: in 2010 the total amount of damage for wild animals was almost 100 thousand euros in total), which forced the provincial councilor for wildlife management Bruno Specchiarelli to ask a hand to the hunters: 954 leaders shot down by the teams, in addition to those reached with selective hunting and the 25 who died against cars, in all 1040.
This is the balance sheet of the "collective hunt" for wild boar in the province of Varese, illustrated this morning, March 23 at Villa Recalcati. A profitable result, explained the commissioner, because it allows not only to limit damage to crops but also to check the health of the species.
On the first front, there are economic realities especially in the Valcuvia and Luinese area, where the raids of wild boars "have come to cause damage for 20 thousand euros in only two companies that produce berries." Damages suffered by farms are reimbursed with a basic deductible of 50 euros, and are detected, after a complaint, by technicians of the fauna nucleus of the province of Varese; then an investigation is opened and at the end of the year the case of each farmer is dealt with by a special commission which, if it deems it appropriate, settles the damage.
"But last year (2010) we managed to pay only 65% of the damage from wild animals - explains Specchiarelli. The Province put fifty thousand there, 15 thousand hunters, out of their pocket. But the resources are limited, and this year there are only 28 thousand euros in the budget for damage caused by the fauna ». What to do then? «To limit the damage we intend to focus on the fences, which are usually made by the hunters themselves - explains Specchiarelli.
We think that proper use of enclosures around crops would halve the amount of damage these animals do. Then we will continue with the killing ». Fences that, of course, will also be used for other animals that damage crops, such as deer, fallow deer and mouflons, for the most part, to which are also added the "mini hares" especially in the south of the province.
Then comes the science. A non-negligible aspect: the analysis on the culled animals allows us to understand how much future generations will amount to numerically (today the population of these animals is around 2.000 heads): depending on the year there may be one or two litters and therefore increase beyond measure.
To find out the state of health of the animals, the jaw is analyzed and photographed to verify the age and therefore understand, out of the total, how many young subjects there are.
The other aspect is obviously also linked to the monitoring of the state of health of animals for the purpose of preventing epidemics. For this reason, slaughterhouses such as the public one in Luino and the private one in Besano are active, which contributed to the slaughter - and control - of about 300 animals.
Source: Varese News