In one year, 2,603 wild boars were killed in the province of Rimini. The number is offered by the hunting and fishing sector of the Rimini area belonging to the Region. This figure includes all the killings, even those managed directly by the provincial police with accredited hunters for this type of operation. A considerable number which also testifies to a progressive approach of the wild boars to the inhabited centres. It is the concern that prompted the government to proceed along the path of felling by approving an amendment that is causing a lot of discussion at a national level, while farmers are obviously satisfied, after years of devastated crops and continuous damage.
In the Rimini area the wild boars have moved towards the coast. The sightings of numerous herds close to the coastal strip, in the Coriano area or in that of Verucchio, are by now a constant. Much more unusual was the intervention that the provincial police have managed in recent weeks along the Marecchia up to the area of the baseball stadium. “We had to intervene – explains Pier Claudio Arrigoni, contact person for the Region in the hunting and fishing sector in the Rimini area – because a very large herd of wild boars had been reported along the Marecchia in potentially dangerous areas such as that of the motorway or the state road in example. For this reason, an appropriate ordinance was issued to close the area to the transit of people, thus closing the nature trails, and then being able to act, which was done in complete safety and in compliance with the rules. We had been monitoring the area for some time”. Rimini is not Rome. The wild boars have not arrived in the city because the monitoring, as well as the containment actions through the killings, have made it possible to prevent the specimens from reaching the most inhabited areas.
The amendment presented by the Brothers of Italy and approved in the parliamentary debate on the budget provides that wild animals can be hunted in the city as long as there is a risk to public safety and road safety. Once killed they can also be eaten after the hygienic-sanitary analyses. Even if the amendment does not speak exclusively of wild boars, it certainly includes them.
In the Rimini area, the last two years have been complicated in managing the increasingly numerous wild boars. Between April 2020 and March 2021, there were more than 2,100 total slaughters, a number exceeded in the following hunting year. “Today the sensation – resumes Arrigoni – is that the number of wild boars has decreased a bit. We can also see it from the claims for damages, which are lower, as well as the amount of damages liquidated by the Region”.
Andrew Olive
