Search

The conservation of Griffon Vulture (Gyps fulvus), the most abundant and widespread vulture in Europe, has been the focus of two LIFE project in Sardinia, that foresaw, among other actions, the release of individuals to increase population size. Within the project LIFE Under Griffon Wings (2015-2020), out of 76 Griffon Vultures that have been released in North Western Sardinia, 43 have been fitted with GPS/GSM tags. On the 3rd of April 2023, one of these Griffon Vultures, named “Caniga”, crossed the Strait of Bonifacio and reached Corsica. It stayed on the island for 20 days, before returning to Sardinia on the 23rd of April. Despite Griffon Vultures have been occasionally reported in Corsica in the last decades, this was the first time that one of the individuals released within the LIFE “Under Griffon Wings” project was recorded there. This observation provides evidence that expanding Griffon Vultures in Sardinia could also include Corsica in their movements and calls for the transboundary management of vulture populations between the two islands, including both monitoring and conservation actions minimizing anthropogenic mortality.

Although many studies highlighted the potential of COVID-19 to reshape existing models of wildlife management, empirical research on this topic has been scarce, particularly in Europe. We investigated the potential of COVID-19 pandemic to accelerate the ongoing decline in an aging population of recreational hunters in Italy. Namely, we modelled spatiotemporal trends between 2011 and 2021 in the number of recreational hunters in 50 Italian provinces with a varying incidence of COVID-19, and temporally delayed waves of infection. Compared to projections from 2011-2019 data, we detected a lower number of hunters who enrolled for the hunting season, both in 2020 (14 provinces) and in 2021 (15 provinces). The provinces with the highest incidence of COVID-19 in the Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna regions were also those experiencing the most marked decrease in hunting participation. Our findings revealed that a wildlife management system based on recreational hunting can be rapidly destabilized by epidemics and their associated public health measures, particularly when the average age of hunters is high, like in Italy. Considered the high incidence attained by COVID-19 in many European countries, where hunters are pivotal for the management of large ungulates and where they were already declining before the pandemic, our findings call for further large-scale research about the impact of COVID-19 on hunting participation.