Italy's drought crisis is driving
more and more wild boar into cities causing increasing death and
damage and exacerbating an already critical invasion situation,
farmers group Coldiretti said Friday.
The drought has shriveled crops and dried up streams pushing
boar ever more towards urban and coastal centres in search of
food and water, Coldiretti President Ettore Prandini told a
board emergency summit with Farm Minister Francesco
Lollobrigida, Federparchi President Giampiero Sammuri,
Fondazione Una President Maurizio Zipponi, and the president of
the Agrivenatoria Biodiversitalia association, Niccolò
Sacchetti.
Boars now cause an incident every two days in Italy, Prandini
said, with the invasion of the animals and other wild beasts
provoking over 200 fatalities and injuries on Italian roads and
streets in a year, as well as untold damage to crops and risks
for livestock farming.
"This is one of the worst all-round menaces to security," said
Coldiretti.
There are an estimated 2.3 million board roaming Italy and 69%
of Italians believe they are too many and back recent plans for
a massive cull.
The centre-left opposition Democratic Party (PD) accused
Lollobrigida of not following through on announcements of the
cull, saying "the boar aren't going to disappear by magic".
But the ruling rightwing Brothers of Italy (FdI) party said the
cull had been included in the 2023 budget and would go ahead as
planned.
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