Farmers demand cull as rampant red deer force out Alpine cattle
AS ONE of Italy’s most fashionable ski resorts, Cortina d’ampezzo is accustomed to being swamped with Maseratis, Porsches and the fur-clad uber-rich.
However, the Alpine meadows and forests that surround the picturesque town in the Dolomites now face an invasion of a rather different sort.
The number of red deer has exploded in recent years and farmers are complaining that their cattle are having to compete for food with the wild animals, endangering their livelihoods.
“All the farmers around here have the same problem,” said Ranieri Caldara, who raises cattle in the village of Mortisa, outside Cortina d’ampezzo.
“Deer numbers are increasing all the time. In one night, they can strip a meadow.”
The red deer population has increased dramatically because of the decline of traditional agriculture and the abandonment of mountain farms. “It’s ideal habitat for deer,” said Franco De Bon, an official with responsibility for hunting in Cortina d’ampezzo’s province of Belluno. “A hundred years ago, meadows were much more extensive and there were many more sheep and cattle being raised. Now the forest has returned.”
Farmers claim that the deer population is also attracting wolves, with the number of attacks on domestic animals beginning to rise.
Cortina d’ampezzo is part of the Veneto region, where there is now estimated to be around 14,000 red deer.
In some areas numbers have nearly doubled in five years and across the Dolomites and the Alps there are thought to be as many as 80,000.
The debate over how to manage them parallels the situation in Britain, where there are now more deer than at any time since the last Ice Age – doubling in Scotland in the past 50 years.
Italy’s Alpine farmers say the situation is particularly acute this year because the winter was severe, with the snow pushing deer into lower pastures.
“The number of red deer needs to be reduced, as has been done with the population of wild boar,” said Giuseppe Pan, an official from the Veneto region.
In most years, authorities give permission for a cull of 1,000 deer. This year, that is likely to increase to 1,200.