“Noon pale and absorbed
by a burning garden wall,
listen among the thorns and brushwood
snapping of blackbirds, rustling of snakes”.
Thus the Genoese poet Eugene Montale described i dry stone walls, symbol of Liguria. This terraced agricultural landscape, the result of centuries-old efforts that have modified the rugged structure of the slopes, has made it possible to create cultivable areas where none existed, supported by dry stone walls, collected on the surface or quarried from the rock. The terraces are of historical value with deep ties to the consolidated landscape and soil protection.
But today they are seriously threatened… by wild boars. Yes, because the ungulates that roam the terraces at night, but often also during the day, especially to the west, between the provinces of Imperia and Savona, are responsible not only for serious damage to agriculture, but for the crumbling of the walls themselves.
He is its spokesperson Giovanni Benza, Aifo councilor of Liguria (in the picture). “The situation is no longer sustainable – he explains – and many colleagues continue to point out that at this rate, olive growing risks being abandoned. We are talking about small plots of land, where the olive trees contribute not only to producing an excellent oil, but also to guaranteeing a unique landscape. The passage of the wild boars rooting in search of fallen olives involves the undoing of entire pieces of dry stone wall, which only a few willing ones have the strength to put back together until the next raid. The consequent land subsidence makes the simplest agricultural practices, such as cutting the grass, impossible”.
A problem that adds up to the hydrogeological instability due to the disappearance of the streams that guarantee the outflow of water. "Nobody cleans them anymore - adds Benza - and the waters are dispersed in the very steep terrain with inevitable consequences, especially where the walls give way precisely because of the passage of the ungulates". An intervention by the Region would be needed, but Benza is demoralized: "We have pointed out this problem several times, without ever receiving an answer".
