They were calculated in six million euros of damage caused in one year by wild boars in the Lombardy countryside with assaults 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 raids, as well as deal with losses in production and market shares and profitability.
This is what I estimate Coldiretti on the occasion of the protest in Piazza Duca d’Aosta in Milan with a thousand farmers from all over Lombardy who gathered this morning in front of Palazzo Pirelli, headquarters of the Regional Council, to denounce a situation that is also causing health, social, economic and environmental problems in the province of Pavia. Alongside the Coldiretti Pavia delegation led by President Silvia Garavaglia and by the director Antonio Tessari with mayors and representatives of local institutions.
«The objective of mobilization in Milan – explained Silvia Garavaglia, President of Coldiretti Pavia – is to enforce the measures envisaged by the interministerial decree immediately at regional level launched last year for the adoption of an extraordinary plan for the management and containment of wild fauna”. At the garrison in the Lombardy capital there was an exhibition with some of the agricultural productions most attacked by these ungulates: from hay, whose quality is compromised by the coming and going of these animals on the meadows, to corn, whose sowing 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. In many cases farmers decide not to report, out of tiredness and resignation. A wine producer who has had his vineyard devastated by wild boars will only be compensated for the simple value of the grapes. Wild boars have a fundamental responsibility for the spread of African Swine Fever (ASF), the disease, not transmissible to humans, which endangers pig farms and with them an entire sector which in Lombardy boasts excellent productions such as PDO salami Varzi and others.
But wild animals also put life at risk safety of people, through increasingly frequent incursions in urban centres. 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 for drivers and passengers. Those of dawn and dusk are the hours most at risk. The problem – Coldiretti underlines – is that wild boars do not always remain at the scene of the accidentgiven that the animal, even when 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 occur precisely to avoid the impact with the animal that escapes without leaving a trace.
Also present at the event were president of the Lombardy Region Attilio Fontana and the regional councilor for Agriculture Alessandro Beduschi. «We are very worried – said President Fontana – both about the fate of the fields but also about the presence of swine fever in the territories concerned». «In recent years – added Beduschi – the Lombardy Region has done more and better than anyone else to contain invasive wildlife and in particular wild boars. In the next few weeks we will adopt the extraordinary plan for the control of wild fauna, which in fact has already been concretely implemented, starting from 3 operational ordinances signed by governor Fontana”.
However, the regional opposition councilors of the Democratic Party Marco Carra, Matteo Piloni and Roberta Vallacchi were also present and attacked: «For months we have been asking the Region to develop an extraordinary regional plan for the containment of wild boars required by law, but to date the Fontana council has remained inert and completely non-compliant. The spread of swine fever was underestimated and taken lightly.”
