Flemingos are uprooting trouble and rice for resotto in north -east of Italy

Jolanda de Savoil: An unusual insect is destroying crops and bizarre farmers in northeast Italy: Flemingo. These relatively recent immigrants have established their hungry sites on flooded fields producing rice for resotto in Ferrara province between Venice and Ravena. Long -legged birds are not interested in transplanting; Rather, use your webbed legs to stir the flamingos soil and snatch mollusk, algae or insects from shallow water. Rice is a collateral damage. Farmers have started patrolling day by day to intimidate birds. They fire their trucks, banging barrels and even small gas cannons that boom thunder. Mostly, the noise just fly them to another nearby rice paddy, which tramps below the bottom. An local producer Enrico Fabry said that he had discouraged after seeing the loss of production of 90% in some of his planted areas. “These are new things that have never happened before. You take so much time and care to prepare everything,” 63 -year -old Fabry said next to one of his pads on the outskirts of Jolanda Di Savoia. “Then, as soon as the crop starts growing, it is like taking a newborn child away. This seems so.” Flemingos comes within a reserve on the coast in the nearby comchio valleys from its former nest hunting ground, where the Po River flows into the long, the longest, Adriatic Sea of ​​Italy. According to Roberto Tinralli, president of the Imilia-Romagna Ornithologist Association, after drought in southern Spain, after drought in southern Spain, they have been further searched to search for nesting grounds in the east. Earlier, they were limited to lakes in North Africa, parts of Spain and a bit of the 61 -year -old Camerag region of France, 61, said with a pond in a city Bentivolgio near Bologna. No studies have yet been done to determine why these flamingos started to further inland, where farmers flooded their fields as a means of sprouting newly planted rice seeds from late spring to early summer. Flamingos is a danger until the paddeds are dried after a few weeks. “Obviously, we are looking for answers from those who have to deal with the problem. From the environmental point of view, it is all beautiful, but we should keep in mind that rice cultivation is one of the most expensive, comprehensive crops,” Masimo Piv said, a 57 -year -old rice producer and vice -president of the union of local farmers. “They are beautiful animals, this is their way of moving and behaving, but the problem is trying to limit their appearance as much as possible,” Paiwa said. Tinarelli, Ornithologists suggested several solutions to shut down the flamingos, which are more human and effective than the currently planned clamorous efforts: with long trees or hedges with nearby pads and even better, freshly planted pads water levels 2 and 4 inches (5 and 10 cm), instead of 2 and 4 cm (30 cm). “This is enough for rice to grow, but is definitely less attractive to flamingos, which should move around in water,” he said.