Wildlife impact on cultivated lands: A multi-temporal spatial analysis

The spread diffusion of wildlife in agroecosystems has induced conflictual interactions with humans, representing a critical issue, especially in terms of damages made on crops. They include deterioration of green and woody parts of crops, removal of seeds, crushing of cultivations, soil degradation. In this regard, a multi-temporal geolocalization and quantification of wildlife impact in agricultural landscapes is still a challenging point to be explored. The purpose of this research is to present a methodological approach, with the involvement of citizens (farmers and fields' owners) in the data collection, to analyze wildlife damages. The study area is the Treviso province, located in North East of Italy. A multi-temporal analysis is carried out considering the period 2009 up to 2018. In detail, a multi-temporal thematic mapping was realized classifying data in terms of wildlife species, damaged crops, and surface covered by affected cultivations. Such data were then processed through multi-variate statistical analysis. The results provide a clear overview of the phenomena in the investigated region, highlighting the fact that the uncontrolled spread of wildlife is responsible for severe damages on agroecosystems. In this connection, damages made by winged species and wild boar are the most numerous, respectively, with 1007 and 497 damages within the considered period. Corn is the most damaged crop, with a total of 977 damages observed on it between 2009 and 2018. Cross tabulation and cluster analysis have confirmed the magnitude of the problem taken into account. Such information could be used then by the local administrations to better understand the phenomena, providing suitable measures to contain it.