2024-07-11 23:44:59
BOATS. Last Friday, a nearly two-year-old groundhog was found and captured in the garage of a supermarket in San Giacomo. It was healthy and was released on the White Horn. “Volunteer firefighters had already captured the animal and put it in a cage for transport,” he reports. Alberto Palmarinof the Forest Service’s Southern Wildlife Management Post. According to wildlife biologist Davide Righetti (Office of Wildlife Management), who attended an on-site inspection, it was a sub-adult native marmot (i.e., an animal in its second year of life).
“There is no logical explanation as to how the marmot ended up in San Giacomo. The nearest marmot colony is about 15 kilometers away as the crow flies.in the Passo Oclini area”, explains Righetti. There are many hypotheses, ranging from involuntary transport by a vehicle (truck or other) to the spontaneous migration of the animal, to loss of orientation. A plausible explanation has not yet been found.
But it is not the first time that a marmot has been found in poor condition in the valley floor, for example at the confluence of the Talvera and Isarco rivers. The animal was frightened and expressed this by whistling loudly; it was then released into the wild by Forestry Service staff in the Corno Bianco area, at Passo Oclini. It does not happen often, but wild animals venture into inhabited areas. “There is a separate office for wild animal management in the Forestry Service. The employees monitor the development of the various protected and huntable wild animal species, their health, their numbers and the damage they cause,” explains Luis Walcher, Provincial Councilor for Agriculture and Forestry. Marmots are a huntable species in South Tyrol and the hunting of these rodents is strictly regulated. On the one hand, there are protected habitats where hunting is generally prohibited. Hunting is open for 30 days in September: a fixed number of animals can be killed first in the damaged areas and then in the hunting areas.
2024-07-11 23:44:59