"Coldiretti he is not doing his associates a good service. Propose hunting as a solution to problems of damage to agriculture it means insisting on a wrong and bankruptcy path that has not produced any results up to now, on the contrary it has been part of the problem. If hunting were a solution, farmers would not have taken to the streets to ask for extraordinary interventions to contain the damage to crops, given that for decades hundreds of thousands of animals have been killed without this having minimized the damage, nor the populations of ungulates themselves ”.
This is the thesis with which the environmental associations (ENPA, LAC, LAV, LIPU and WWF) respond to the demonstration organized by Coldiretti in front of Montecitorio. "There is a real and complex problem that must be faced with serious and effective tools and professionals in the sector, without continuing to delegate the management of Italian fauna to hunters". On the Italian territory (ISPRA 2010) it is estimated the presence of almost two million wild ungulates, primarily wild boar (900 thousand), roe deer (450 thousand), alpine chamois (120 thousand) and deer (60 thousand). The presence of mouflons and ibexes is more contained, and even more that of the Apennine chamois (less than 2000). The reasons for the expansion of the last decades are well known: the abandonment of agriculture and livestock in marginal areas, resulting in the expansion of forests and scrubland, has created new habitats and high food availability.
Alongside these ecological reasons, there are also playful ones: many species have in fact been repopulated for hunting purposes, with the result that farmers complain of damage to crops deemed unsustainable. But the solution is there, and starts precisely by eliminating the factors that artificially inflate the populations of ungulates. In the first place it is necessary to put an end to any legal practice or not of restocking e foraging of ungulates, banned for years for wild boar but which are still being fielded for fear that the wildlife available will decrease. To this is added the advantage linked to the many illegal sales of meat (which can reach a turnover of millions of euros every year), thanks to the availability of compliant restaurateurs and the scarcity of health and tax controls. It is therefore evident that the hunting world has no interest in reducing the presence of ungulates on the territory, because it draws fun and usefulness from them.
Indeed, the same hunt carried out in a non-selective way, as in the hunt, can even increase the populations of wild boars, removing larger individuals (adults) with the consequent early reproduction of younger individuals, which would not reproduce in the presence of adults. “We would like some agricultural associations, which have always sat on the boards of the Territorial Areas of Hunting and they did not spend a word on the thinning of the provincial staff assigned to the matter, continued with the same mistakes of the past without finding adequate solutions for farmers which represent errors which, by now, the farmers themselves are beginning to realize. Only with a rational, scientific and structured approach, without resorting to “spot” or propaganda measures, will we be able to truly solve the problems of farmers in the long term, in balance with nature and ecosystems ”.