Coldiretti Cremona present with a large delegation in Milan, to take part in the mobilization in Piazza Duca D’Aosta, right under the Pirellone to denounce the serious situation caused in the area by the now uncontrolled presence of wild boars.
In fact, the damage caused in a year by these ungulates in the Lombardy countryside amounts to at least six million euros, with attacks and raids that destroy crops, production, pastures, and force farmers to intervene to restore what has been ruined, periodically work to carry out maintenance on the tools installed to try to stop the incursions, as well as address losses in production, market share and profitability.
This is what Coldiretti Lombardia estimates on the occasion of the protest in Piazza Duca d’Aosta in Milan with a thousand farmers who gathered in front of Palazzo Pirelli, headquarters of the Regional Council, to denounce with their painful experiences a situation that is causing health, social, economic and environmental problems. Also at their side are mayors and representatives of local institutions. Led by the confederal delegate Giovanni Benedetti and the director Giovanni Roncallithe delegation of farmers from Coldiretti Cremona and representatives of the Cremona area are present, including various mayors and the president of the province Mirko Signoroni.
“The objective of the mobilization in Milan – he declares Gianfranco Cominciolipresident of Coldiretti Lombardia – is to immediately apply at regional level the measures envisaged by the inter-ministerial decree launched last year for the adoption of an extraordinary plan for the management and containment of wild fauna”.
In Lombardy the problem of wild boars, which adds to the damage caused by other wild or invasive species that farmers are forced to deal with on a daily basis, has worsened year after year. “At the garrison in the Lombardy capital – explains the regional Coldiretti – an exhibition was set up with some of the agricultural products most attacked by these ungulates: from hay, the quality of which is compromised by the coming and going of these animals on the meadows, to corn, the sowing of which is decimated if not eliminated; from potatoes to small fruits that are sought after as food, but also rice that is crushed by their passage, vineyards where the smaller plants are uprooted while the ripe fruit is eaten. Damage is also recorded in olive groves – explains Coldiretti Lombardia – with wild boars digging near the roots of the plants, compromising their stability”.
“These animals – continues Coldiretti – they upset the environmental balance of vast territorial ecosystems in areas of naturalistic value and do not spare the dry stone walls, whose art has been recognized as an intangible heritage of humanity by UNESCO. Without forgetting that wild boars have a fundamental responsibility for the spread of African Swine Fever (PSA), the disease, not transmissible to humans, which endangers pig farms and with them an entire sector which in Lombardy boasts excellent production such as DOP Varzi salami, Brianza salami and Cacciatora salami, local specialties such as the traditional Cremonese salami and plays a fundamental role in the creation of great samples of Made in Italy such as DOP Parma ham and DOP San Daniele ham”.
But wild animals also put people’s safety at risk, through increasingly frequent incursions into urban centers, causing crashes and accidents on roads and highways. In 2023, according to Asaps data (the Association of Supporters of Friends of the Traffic Police), at a national level there were 193 accidents with deaths or injuries involving animals: 88% of these were caused by a wild animal. Lombardy is the second region for the number of accidents with animals, together with Campania, with 20 episodes in a year, behind only Tuscany which recorded 23.
“The repair of damaged fences or the temporary installation of electrified fences are of little or no use – underlines Coldiretti – while the high-speed impact of a car or motorbike against the mass of an adult wild boar can have fatal and dramatic consequences for drivers and passengers.” Those of dawn and dusk are the hours most at risk. “The problem – underlines Coldiretti – is that the wild boars do not always remain at the scene of the accident, given that the animal, even if injured, takes refuge in the bush or in the meadows, or it happens that the crash against a tree, a mile-long stone or the skidding and going off the road they check precisely to avoid impact with the animal which escapes without leaving any traces”.
