Of the 3,300 wolves registered in Italy, over a thousand are in Piedmont. «But the numbers, in our opinion, are underestimated» says Giovanni Dalmasso, herdsman from Crissolo, president of the Adialpi association which brings together Piedmont’s mountain breeders.
«We are in spring – he continues – and hundreds of Piedmontese families with their flocks of sheep and herds of cattle are leaving the stables and returning to graze the plain meadows until, around June, they begin to climb to the mountain pastures in high altitude pastures. And like every year the main fear concerns the presence of the wolf which is now increasingly widespread not only in the mountains, but also around the farmhouses in the plains with numerous sightings and attacks now throughout the entire Piedmontese territory. In recent months we met with the Region and the Ministry of the Environment, we were promised interventions, working groups, but so far nothing has been done.”
The president of Adialpi has been denouncing this situation for years. The problems are various: the difficulty in managing the herds, the high costs for defense, with tools that in many cases prove to be ineffective, the direct and indirect damage of predation, the delays in compensation, which in any case are not sufficient to cover the losses, and all the collateral difficulties that have arisen following the spread of the predator such as the management of sheep dogs or the mountain pasture areas that are not grazed because they are too far from the fences.
«Despite the comforting words and full support for our proposals – continues Dalmasso – the situation today seems not to have changed at all: the wolf continues to be super protected, our animals are increasingly at risk of attacks every day and our future increasingly in doubt. We ask for rapid and targeted measures to limit excessive protection for the wolf, which for years has no longer been in danger of extinction, but rather has a population that is far too numerous. We must start with a real plan to contain the species, as other European countries are already doing, including France. We are not willing to wait any longer. If we are not involved in the work discussions we will protest in the streets. For too many years, farmers and shepherds have been left alone to fight against a problem that affects everyone, but only we farmers are the ones paying for the damage.”
A difficult coexistence, as evidenced by the attacks by wolves on animals in the mountain pastures and, in recent years, the sightings and predations even in the lowland pastures. «A herd attacked by a wolf – concludes Dalmasso – has repercussions that go beyond individual predation. The animals remain scared, restless, difficult to manage sometimes for weeks.”
Tags: thousand wolves mountains Piedmont numbers farmers claim mountain pastures
