“We need a European action plan that allows us to identify concrete and immediately applicable actions to ensure coexistence between the great predators in Europe - wolves, bears, lynxes - and the activity of our farmers, breeders and shepherds which, despite a thousand difficulties, continue to avoid the abandonment of entire territories and to guarantee the safety of those who live there”. Thus Paolo De Castro, first vice president of the Agriculture Committee of the European Parliament addressed the EU Commissioner responsible for the environment, the Maltese Karmenu Vella, speaking at the plenary assembly in Strasbourg.
For De Castro, “the Habitat directive is bringing all the desired results to Europe terms of safeguarding bio-diversity”. “These results – he explains – cannot, however, be to the detriment of those farmers who find themselves dealing with the damage caused by attacks by large predators on a daily basis”.
“Even recently – recalls the Pd MEP – we have read of animals massacred by packs of wolves unleashed in Emilia Romagna as in Veneto, with economic consequences that often threaten the livelihoods of strategic sectors of agriculture and rooted for centuries in our tradition, such as pastoralism".
“In short – concluded De Castro – the creation of an effective European action plan can no longer be postponed: we cannot afford to continue reducing the constant damage caused by large predators to simple side effects of an otherwise positive phenomenon, such as the recolonization of these species".
