Wilderness Italy: Lupo, the contradictions of the "experts"

Wilderness Italia: Lupo, the contradictions of the "experts"

Wilderness Italy: Wolf, the contradictions of the "experts". In Italy, "experts" are only the graduates in our universities, even if they are not very authoritative (recently even the famous Bocconi has made water on all sides!). Elsewhere, an expert is usually someone who really knows a problem, regardless of educational qualification.

Unfortunately, we are still far from the moment in which the legal value of the qualification will be abolished; so just having the piece of paper is you are considered "expert". Obviously, therefore, that the "experts" on the wolf are only the graduates in biology who have dedicated themselves to the study of this animal (obviously, always for a fee!). But how many times do these "experts" tell the truth? And how many times do they seem instead to say only partisan truth, perhaps with omissions (for the Church it is a venial sin, but it is always a sin!) Or with convenient interpretations of facts or analyzes? Lately these discordant truths have been read in various newspapers, not to mention in various reports, "authoritative" press articles or statements at interviews. Let's see some of them. The female wolf that mated with the male from Slovenia in the Lessini mountains (Veneto). We had always been told that it came from the Apennines (assertion of various wolfphiles), although the idea of a Padania crossed by a wolf to move from the Apennines to Lessinia sounded very unlikely. Now we learn that instead it comes from the packs that are between France and Piedmont (assertion of the wolf scholar Francesca Marucco: interview with Il Giornale).

The estimate that the undersigned made in 2010 of at least 4.500 wolves in Italy has never been denied: they limited themselves to saying that it was a "lie". Now they have also written that that figure would not be reliable as "on the basis of personal calculations" (the President of the Parma ENPA Angela Pia Mori Gialdi). But were not (and are) far-fetched calculations also those given up to now by other organisms? So much so that Prof. Boitani himself declared that the number of wolves that make up the Italian population is not known (assertion in an interview with the Gaianews site). Or are the "official" ones considered reliable only because they are calculated by the so-called "experts"? Yet my calculation was made starting precisely from the data, objective and verifiable, of the so-called "experts", and based on their scientific indications! Or do the calculations give different results depending on who presses the calculator keys !?

In Abruzzo a pandemonium of denials broke out on Facebook about a wolf attack in a gas station reported by the local press. A fact that later turned out to be absolutely true. So much so that no authority has decided to "burn" by denying it, nor have the environmental associations accredited as authoritative: of course, it was true news but it was also uncomfortable; therefore it was better to ignore it rather than deny it, because, as someone wrote (perhaps Andreotti), “a denial is news given twice”. Better make her forget! How other news, at least similar, such as those that happened in the Parma area, in Castel di Sangro and in Sirente (L'Aquila) have been put on the back burner. Not to mention those documented in Umbria and France in recent years.
Have you ever read, in Italy, a newspaper article or an interview, which talked about the wolves killed in recent years in all the countries with their populations, to keep them under control and therefore contain the damage they cause? Yet, these are events that are happening all over the world: coincidentally, everywhere except in Italy! A country of rumors about nothing, of prevaricators, of those of "quite other problems", of postponements, of "alternatives" (to hunting and / or killing, of course).

All of which detract from the impact of wolves on livestock and pets. At most we try to unload them on dogs and hybrids (so no one has the duty to pay the damages!). “We must also consider that the damage to the flocks is also caused by stray dogs and by the dogs of the hunters themselves, during hunting trips. Therefore, we must not fall into the error of generalizing, blaming all faults to be demonstrated (…) there is always an alternative ”. Here is the usual defense of environmentalists (in this case the associations of the Val di Vara, in La Spezia). Never that they urge the authorities to pay their damages promptly and totally or, as an alternative, never that they (the wolf-lovers) are offered to pay them, at least the sure wolf ones! Indeed, we hardly ever talk about this thorny topic: in the meantime, those who "pay" are those of the rural world. We only talk about the biological value of the wolf, the scientific importance of having it in our mountains for their biological function. Of their beauty as an animal! How much “manna”, however, these wolves bring to their friends, with endless Life projects for researchers: but never a single euro for breeders!

Even wolves are presented as tourist "attractors". That is, instead of highlighting the damage and social problems from the presence of the wolf, we speak only of the supposed positive aspect (but we wait for the news of aggression to humans and their affections animals to increase in number, as the facts are increasingly to demonstrate - a last case in Sweden is recent -, then we will see how much tourist attraction the wolves will make!). They speak of the “level of coexistence between the animal symbol of the wild and the contemporary man” who would have “made school in the world” (always the expert Francesca Marucco). Of course, only that coexistence has been and continues to be IMPOSED, not wanted by the people of the Italian mountains. This, however, Marucco does not tell us. He then talks to us about his relations with the scholars of Montana (USA), without however informing us of the measures that have been taken in those States - and is about to be taken again: there is a bill brought into discussion just in these days to the Congress - to limit the number of wolves.

Marucco also tells us about an 11% growth per year of the wolf population in the Alps. Incidentally, a figure that, if applied to wolves in the Apennines, starting from 1970 would not only confirm my 2010 estimate, but it would exceed it by 2.000 specimens and today it would reach almost 10.000 wolves (we also consider that half have died or been killed, although I imagine that the dead have already been included in that 11%, but we still remain on the 5.000)!

The DNA, then, always so precise in public conferences and publications, only to be denied in private, when it is asserted that it is impossible to distinguish hybrids from real wolves or "Alpine" wolves from Apennine wolves: which, however, others claim to be subspecies to be preserved for their biodiversity! And how can they be preserved, if they are not distinguished from hybrids and individuals of other origins? Italians need truth, in order to decide what to do to solve the wolf problem, not uncertainties and discrepancies about everything!

To justify the presence of hybrids ("crossbreeding") it has come to support the ridiculous thesis and possibility that "dogs and wolves belong to the same species, so they can reproduce". That "there are crossbreeding of varying degrees, but most of them are just wandering dogs, both those of lying shepherds but also those of hunters and some private citizens" (the President of the Parma ENPA Angela Pia Mori Gialdi)! Ridiculous, yes, and also ignorant of animal behavior (they, the animal rights activists!), Because if it is a wolf male who mates (which is very unlikely) with a female dog in heat, the puppies remain in our homes not in nature. While only the much, much more unlikely case of a she-wolf in heat getting covered by a male dog would lead the puppies to turn into wild hybrids!

Unfortunately, it is only with these "textbook experts" that the authorities are confronted, for the fact that they have the chrism of a graduation rag, when breeders and shepherds or people of the rural world or whoever have more experience than they are. he lives rurality, perhaps even just by hunting: never a team that also includes these stakeholders (today it is fashionable to call them that).

Frank Zunino
Secretary General of the Italian Wilderness Association

(26 February 2015)