“Unfortunately, once again we are forced, and we underline the word forced, to return to the predator issue. We do so following news that emerged during some television broadcasts which, while proposing to investigate this difficult condition, in our opinion, do not take into account some fundamental aspects of the issue: the huge additional costs that farmers have to bear in order to work. " These are the words of Claudius Capecchi, president Cia-Grosseto which follow some television broadcasts dedicated to predation. “As the CIA – Grosseto we have always maintained that the issue is particularly delicate and that radical positions, wherever they come from, do not help.
In recent years we have reiterated that i various means of prevention, from LGDs to the latest generation fences, they can certainly represent an aid against predation, but what we have also highlighted, because daily events testify to it, is that no system is decisive. It follows that the farmer, in order to hope to continue to survive, must change his way of working: the sheep must be kept indoors at night, while during the day it is necessary to pass to an assisted pasture; the number of LGDs must be adequate for the attempt to drive away predators and they must be checked because they could be a threat to anyone crossing the area.
All this involves huge economic interventions that they are almost never considered when dealing with the wolf-sheep issue, as if it were taken for granted that the shepherd must continue to invest economically to ward off predators. Keeping the sheep indoors - explains Capecchi - means equipping companies with larger structures that have a high cost because they must guarantee the protection and well-being of the animal, increasing the number of dogs means increasing the cost of feed and then we must consider spending on fences. In short, today the shepherd has to face considerable additional expenses if he wants to survive and this at the expense of company income. It has been calculated, by the responsible bodies and therefore not by the CIA, that today each garment has an increased cost of approximately 40 - 50 euros per sheep.
An enormous amount for the shepherd who will never be able to cover this outlay with the sale of his products. Tackling the predators issue by analyzing only part of the problem therefore means doing demagogy; as a Confederation, we believe it is essential that the issue be addressed in all its aspects without ever omitting which and how many are the huge costs that companies have to bear to defend themselves from predators. Aware of the complexity of the issue - continues the president - we have always avoided extremism, we are willing to dialogue with everyone and above all we have called on politics to do its part.
Indeed, it is up to politics to identify projects that allow pastoralism not to die; to us, representatives of all pastors, whatever their thoughts, however, we have the task of illustrating the matter with intellectual honesty, the same honesty that we would like to see every time we talk about this topic. Partial analyzes - concludes Capecchi - are misleading, create mistrust and clashes, do not serve to protect pastoralism and the income of farmers, but they do not even serve to biodiversity and to ensure environmental sustainability. "