The farmers of Coldiretti are ready to return to the streets to ask for urgent measures from the Region to also protect the road safety of citizens. The cry of alarm was raised following the weekend just ended which was characterized by two incidents caused by wild animals. One in Castiglione, the other in Saturnia.
The wildlife emergency is no longer just a problem for farmers and the countryside but increasingly for cities and urban areas with Tuscany which, also in 2023, confirms itself as the region in Italy with the highest number of accidents caused by wild animals. The latest episode dates back to the night between Sunday and yesterday in the municipality of Castiglione: a car, with three boys on board, overturned to avoid hitting a wild boar that suddenly emerged from the side of the road. Only by a miracle did the three young people emerge unscathed from this terrible accident.
The same night, on a sheep farm in Saturnia, sixteen sheep were mauled by predators and others are still missing. “The measure is guilt. Enough is enough – thunders Simone Castelli, president of Coldiretti Grosseto –. What we have been asking for a long time from the institutions and we will do it again forcefully with a new mobilization, are rapid and effective interventions and extraordinary containment plans as foreseen by the Decree interministerial meeting of 13 June 2023 to guarantee safety in the countryside, but also in the cities”. Alongside the feeling of exasperation due to the out-of-control presence of wild boars and predators, there is an ever-increasing feeling of impotence on the part of farmers and breeders who daily have to deal with the destruction of crops and the killing of sheep. But not only. The reasons for concern are increasingly also health-related: wild boars are the main vectors of swine fever and its spread in Maremma could endanger the survival of pig farms and create considerable inconvenience for tourism, leading the health authorities to trigger bans on mushroom and truffle picking, fishing activities and even trekking, mountain biking and all other activities that could lead to direct or indirect interaction with infected wild boars. According to an estimate by Coldiretti, in the last decade predation has caused the disappearance of 500 sheep farms and at least 40 thousand animals throughout the province.
