The Valencian government will pay reserve owners and hunting companies forty euros per wild boar killed and delivered to places designated for this purpose, with the aim of combating the overpopulation of this animal and trying to prevent the arrival of the plague. … African pork in the Valencian Community
This was indicated this Friday by the third vice-president and Minister of the Environment, Infrastructure, Territory and Recovery, Vicente Martinez Musduring the press conference after the plenary session of the Consell, during which he announced the extraordinary measures adopted by his department, as well as that of Agriculture, to combat overpopulation.
With this in mind, the Generalitat published the report prior to the decree to adopt different measures with a budget of six million euros to reduce the wild boar population. Concretely, actions will be carried out in 353 reserves and hunting areas in the province of Alicante, 209 in Castellón and 438 in Valencia.
According to the figures processed by Environment and detailed by Martínez Mus, the most optimistic forecasts estimate the overpopulation at 100,000 wild boars, while the most pessimistic forecasts put it at 200,000. It is for this reason that the Consell ratified this Friday the start of the regulatory procedure of the future decree-law of extraordinary measures to adopt preventive initiatives in the 542 municipalities of the Valencian Community.
Furthermore, this initiative is supplemented by an emergency order from the public company Vaersa, which will allow a hunted animal collection serviceas well as the launch of a trapping device in points where hunting activity “is not a satisfactory solution”, as detailed by the Generalitat in a press release.
To define the operational strategy, the General Directorate of the Natural Environment, dependent on the Third Vice-Presidency and the Department of Environment, Infrastructure, Territory and Recovery, analyzed different scenarios of sport hunting and wild boar control, and selected the one that covers the greatest number of municipalities and pig farms. Concretely, there are around a thousand hunting holders.
The plan sets out how priority areas the risky road corridors A-7, AP-7, N-232, A-3, A-23, CV-35 and CV-10, where the presence of wildlife requires particular preventive attention. In addition, the initiative will make it possible to move forward in updating and harmonizing passive surveillance protocols, in order to have more precise information.
On the other hand, the Ministry of Agriculture, Water, Livestock and Fisheries has strengthened its logistics to respond “quickly and effectively” to any possible health epidemic.
Likewise, farms will be able to undertake the necessary actions to strengthen their security within the framework of the aid order aimed at improving the competitiveness of livestock farms, with investments aimed at strengthening biosecurity and preventing the entry of diseases into farms. Concretely, this aid for biosecurity and competitiveness was increased, from 4.2 million euros to 9 million.
In this regard, the Minister of the Environment highlighted that “it was already a problem that had concerned us and that motivated several regulations in recent months”, although now “the problem of the possibility of African swine fever reaching us has been added and this has generated the need to implement extraordinary measures at all levels, to be better protected and continue to be a territory free of this pest”.
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