AND jump a few meters above a busy road, accidentally immortalized by a motorist. The protagonist of one of the most shared videos of this beginning of 2024 is a Deerand the act—if it can be defined as such—was done in Bellunoalong the road that connects Meano, in the municipality of Santa Giustina, to Paderna, a town in the municipality of San Gregorio nelle Alpi.
The video comes from January 2, when a woman sitting in the passenger seat of a car managed to film the few seconds in which the deer was came running from the fields which were running along the road, took a leap and landed rather disastrously on the opposite side and continued to run. It is unclear where he headed next, but the presence of these animals in the area Saint Justina it is known for its proximity to the Valle Scura Nature Reserve and the Piave River.
The video with the deer was also shared by the president of the Veneto region, Luca Zaia, on his TikTok profile is crossing regional borders and going viral. But what we need to focus our attention on rather than the “athletic” abilities of the deer – an animal that, despite its size, can jump with surprising agility – is the risk posed by roads for wildlife. In the given case, the animal managed to jump the road and land without injury, but if the road was wider or truck the development would be anything but spectacular.
In addition, there are many animals that, especially in some regions of Italy, they end up investing trying to cross busy roads and the meaning of the so-calledwildlife corridors“, passages above or below elevated areas designed specifically to allow animals to easily and safely overcome risky places. An alternative is fencing, which, however, must be placed by road managers in agreement with the municipalities, and which are often expensive and difficult to maintain.
In Venice, however, this topic is very current and just as serious. Just remember what happened in October to Manuel Favaro, a 35-year-old driver from Treviso who died after being impaled by a deer’s antlers, also dead, hit by a car and thrown onto the cab of his truck. At the end of 2022, it was the province of Belluno itself that announced that by 2024 would build three wildlife crossings along the road arteries of the northernmost region of Venice, in cooperation with Veneto Strade, allocates a loan of 400,000 euros for initial interventions.
“In recent years, deer reach approx 10 thousand units in our territory – Councilor Franco De Bon explained the codes – Mouflons, wild boars and, for a few years, wolves should be added to them, whose presence, however, will probably have an effect on the decrease in the number of ungulates”.