Culling of otters. There is a brawl between the animal rights and environmentalist associations over the extermination scheduled for tomorrow 4 June in the Urbano di Levante park in Cesenatico of the nutria, which according to the municipal administration would be overpopulated.
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves him
Culling of otters. There is a brawl between the animal rights and environmentalist associations over the extermination scheduled for tomorrow 4 June in the Urbano di Levante park in Cesenatico of the nutria, which according to the municipal administration would be overpopulated.
The sides see on the one hand the Enpa, absolutely contrary to the measure, e on the other the WWF, in the figure of its president Ivano Togni, who intervened on facebook in support of the "extreme" solutions to eliminate a serious threat to our biodiversity. Everything starts from the programming of the shooting with rifles and carbines programmed by the Municipality and formally authorized by an ordinance, with the approval of the Province, to to hunt otters. The action, which is based on the eradication plan for coypu and the state law 157/92 for the control of wildlife, immediately found the hard front of Animal Protection, which asked the President of the Province of Forlì and the Mayor of the Romagna city to stop the massacre immediately.
“Unfortunately the Forlivese and Cesenate area is not new to such initiatives - declares the Enpa -. These initiatives highlight a superficiality of local administrators in terms of wildlife management. In fact, the nutria can be considered to all intents and purposes a wild animal, therefore subject to the regulatory provisions of law 157/92 which, it should be remembered, establishes that for the containment of populations, in the event that there are real problems, ecological methodologies proposed and evaluated by ISPRA must be applied. Furthermore, it is necessary to underline that in no part of the aforementioned national legislation is the term “eradication” mentioned ”.
The association, which has reserved the right to verify the documents relating to the alleged situation of overpopulation, wonders whether the use of bloodless solutions required by law has been taken into consideration. “We would also like to understand what the problems would be related to the presence of otters in the park - continues Animal Protection -. In fact, it is difficult to believe in episodes of zoonosis given that to date there are no documented cases of transmission of pathologies from nutria to humans or to pets. On the other hand, it is true that mass execution risks creating the conditions for a subsequent demographic increase, caused by a deconstruction of the nutria population in favor of the younger age groups and females ”.
But on the subject the president of the WWF Ivano Togni does not agree at all. “Sorry to contradict - says Togni - the friends of Enpa but Nutria is one invasive alien species that poses a serious threat for other native animal species and in general for our biodiversity, therefore it is a species to be eradicated, not only from the Levante Park of Cesenatico but throughout the national territory. The negative impact that nutria causes on plant and animal biocenoses is now established and having not yet caused irreversible effects, it is all the more appropriate to adopt control strategies that tend to effectively limit its spread and its numerical consistency " .
On the methods of suppression, then, we should ensure that "are painless and in accordance with the laws in force, in some cases chloroform has been adopted, but a firearm is not necessarily more painless than other tools. We too regret the idea of killing animals, however innocent, but their protection would imply the choice of condemning many other animal and plant species that suffer their impact ". But the problem of Nutria, for the WWF, remains.
The Enpa, however, has no doubts: “it is disconcerting that local authorities do not understand how much killing animals is useless, wasteful, contrary to science and to the popular will. Perhaps the real goal is not to solve an alleged problem but to obtain easy consensus by showing public opinion a decision-making "face" through a solution that perhaps they would have applied in prehistoric times, when an animal that "threatened" the life of man, was being killed. A false step that one would like to take on the skin of animals and against the popular will ”.
Roberta Ragni
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