The Province forms the “doublets” to regulate the ungulates. Three thousand deer are killed. In the viewfinder now the crows too
BELLUNO. There is an urgent need to bring fauna back into balance with agriculture and animal husbandry. And this is the reason why the Province is always professionalizing new hunters as sentinels of biodiversity. What does it mean? The latest deer census, not yet formalized, speaks of 8,000 heads, counted one by one, a hundred fewer than last year, but at the end of a control plan that has reduced deer by as many as 3,000 unit.
A massacre, it will be said. «Not at all» replies the managing director Franco De Bon «This number is compatible with the needs of agriculture and forests».
In Cansiglio, in fact, the excessive quota of ungulates has devastated large areas of undergrowth. The province has been re-naturalized, the wolf has also arrived, but the various families of animals are excessive. Think of wild boars, the most feared attila for some years now, especially by those who have pastures at high altitude, in the Pre-Alps.
But, beware, the crow, a bird that seems harmless, is actually the second source of the feared disaster, especially for sowing. “Containment is essential” explains De Bon “if we want to guarantee the arable land in our valleys too”.
Issue of biodiversity, according to the exponent of the Province; animal rights activists should also take note. Part of biodiversity is also the seeds eaten by crows or the seedlings in the woods “grazed” by ungulates.
Who, then, must provide for this rebalancing? The hunters. Which in the province have halved; today they barely reach 2,000. Well, the training courses for Diana’s followers, started by the Province, have begun at Villa Patt di Sedico. A path for experts in the selective harvesting of ungulates in accordance with the Ispra guidelines, in collaboration with the Trentino Environment Forests and Fauna Academy, the permanent training school in environmental, forestry and faunal matters of the Province of Trento. About fifty people enrolled in the lessons, ranging from the regulatory framework to hunting techniques, from ecology to recognition in nature, from hygiene rules on the treatment of meat to ballistics, up to some practical exercises. The course will go on until the beginning of October, with two parts: the first, basic, the same for everyone; the second dedicated to individual huntable species.
«An indispensable course for training the people who are responsible for regulating the populations of ungulates of the highest profile in the area» explains De Bon. The ultimate goal is to have hunting professionals. Because the management of the territory necessarily passes through two components: the planning that the Region does with the participation of the Province, and the training of the subjects who exercise the withdrawal. In this way the hunter enters fully into civil society as a regulator of unbalanced faunal situationsto”.
Hunters, therefore, are becoming more and more professionals, even in the naturalistic field. And with them, according to the Province, alliances should be concluded for the conservation of species.