With the drought which has dried out crops and dried out canals and streams, the raids of herds of wild boars in search of food and water are increasing, moving from one territory to another, so much so that they are capable of traveling up to 40 kilometers at a time. Yet another complaint comes from Coldiretti Puglia, after the sighting of a herd of wild boars on a farm in Santeramo, with the need to promptly adopt the extraordinary regional containment plan and effective regulatory tools to defend the territory from a real invasion.
With Puglia invaded by wild boars, there is not only the Agrifana plague, but there is an alarm for the safety of people in the countryside and in the city – reports Coldiretti Puglia – with herds pushing into urban centres, among parked cars, prams with children and elderly people going shopping, “with the areas of the Murgia of Bari and Taranto, of the Gargano and of the Dauno sub-Apennines – thunders the director of Coldiretti Puglia, Pietro Piccioni – which have become the El Dorado of wild boars, with a worrying frequency of road accidents, but they devastate the crops by devouring Altamura lentils. grass peas, broad beans, chickpeas and peas, broccoli, vegetables, newly sown seedlings of field beans and wheat, grapes especially on espalier vines, fruit shaking the trees, all the undergrowth and the biodiversity of the woods and parks”.
The packs of wild boars – underlines Coldiretti – are moving ever closer to homes and schools, even to parks, destroying crops, attacking animals, besieging stables, causing road accidents with deaths and injuries and scratching around in the waste with obvious risks for Health. The situation has become unsustainable in the city and in the countryside with incalculable economic damage to agricultural production but – underlines Coldiretti – the environmental balance of vast territorial ecosystems in areas of naturalistic value is also compromised with the loss of both animal and plant biodiversity.
This is – highlights the regional Coldiretti – only the tip of the iceberg because many do not report, discouraged by the bureaucratic delays and the conditions imposed by the insurance companies such as, for example, in addition to the traces on the car and on the asphalt, also the discovery of the animal carcass with which we encountered.
In this scenario, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has also launched an appeal to the states of the European Union asking for extraordinary measures to prevent wild boars from accessing food and reduce the number of animals to limit the risk of spreading the disease. African swine fever (PSA) which affects animals but not humans. The majority of citizens – concludes Coldiretti Puglia – consider the excessive presence of wild animals a real national emergency which affects the safety of people as well as the economy and work, especially in the most disadvantaged areas.
