Giuseppe Pan, Councilor for Agriculture and Hunting of the Veneto Region, took stock of thewild boar emergency in Veneto after being solicited by various agricultural associations and local communities. Ungulates have caused considerable damage to crops, people and vehicles, but according to Pan hunting is not the only and decisive tool available. In his opinion, in fact, it is necessary to implement control interventions, without forgetting the careful selection of hunters.
Before arriving at definitive choices, however, the commissioner is willing to wait for the scientific technical opinion of theISPRA (Higher Institute for Environmental Protection and Research) on the experimentation that has been put in place in the Lessinia Regional Park, which extends between the provinces of Verona and Vicenza. As mentioned by Pan, among other things, only in the Veronese area is the wild boar hunting and limited to the plateau of Lessinia itself, as foreseen by a recent resolution of the regional council. The commissioner wanted to recall how wild boars are present in Veneto due to illegal immissions, not least those from the Balkans and the Carpathians.
Furthermore, the invasive sampling would paradoxically risk increasing the number of the species precisely because of these immissions. A better alternative could be that of provincial level control, using hunters who have been properly trained. Pan hoped that this system would be adopted above all in agricultural areas, that is, those in which the damage was greater and more substantial.
According to him, an experience to be taken as a model would be that of the Euganean Hills Park, where guards, provincial police, forestry corps and selected and trained hunters worked together to solve the problem. The situation was faced with electrified fences in the vicinity of the forest and with the felling by authorized controllers: in this way it was possible to kill or capture 6500 wild boars over the last 14 years, with 900 specimens registered only in the year that has just ended.
Pan then concluded his speech by recalling the proposal of the regional council, namely the bill that contains new rules to contain the damage caused by various wild species (not only wild boars, but also wolves and bears), a series of regulations that are being examined by the Regional Agriculture Commission. The main objective, however, always remains that of making the safety of people and agricultural activities as compatible as possible and the protection of the surrounding environment and all wildlife resources.