The seventh LIFE Perdix Community Forum, which was held yesterday at the headquarters of the Ferrara Plain Reclamation Consortium, was an opportunity to celebrate an important project milestone, namely the signing of the LIFE Perdix Voluntary Code of Conduct with 5 good practices to safeguard the Italian partridge in the Mezzano Valley.

In the last year some agricultural companies in the Mezzano area have worked together with Legambiente for the development of this Code which will see them committed in the coming years to the adoption of good practices to encourage the presence of the Italic partridge in that territory, while improving the environmental value of the habitat.

The practices shared with farmers are different, but the most significant include the maintenance of stubble during the winter, no-till sowing and the promotion of organic production within the companies.

The signing of the Code will also commit farmers to become ambassadors of the project and to guarantee the continuous exchange of information for the monitoring of the species, significantly contributing to the conservation of an area of high environmental value.

The Ferrara Pianura Reclamation Consortium has given impetus to this process, having always supported the project, with field assistance and the sale of spaces for the construction of reintegration enclosures. “The achievement of this important result demonstrates that agriculture is not the enemy of the environment as we often hear – states Stefano Calderoni, president of the Consortium – but rather that in highly anthropized territories like ours it is indispensable for achieving the objectives of environmental sustainability that the 2030 Agenda imposes on us. The key to this success was the dialogue between the parties, a dialogue that we must keep open also for the future”.

The presentation of the Code – curated by Antonino Morabito of Legambiente Nazionale – was held during the seventh Project Community Forum, a conference in which the project coordinator Francesco Riga, of ISPRA – Higher Institute for Environmental Protection, together with Daniel Tramontana and Davide Senserini, wildlife technicians of FIdC – Italian Hunting Federation, provided a detailed report on the progress of the project and the results obtained thanks to the reintroductions of the species. “In the Mezzano area there are between 200 and 300 stable pairs of Gray Partridge – explains Riga – certainly an underestimated number and in any case a very positive element also given the unfavorable climatic conditions of the last breeding seasons and the strong predation” . In particular, a peculiar behavior of the Gray Partridge observed within the project gives “good hope for the future of this species in the Mezzano – explains Senserini – that is the adoption by couples without offspring or single individuals, of broods without parents, because young people accompanied by adults have a greater guarantee of survival.” To date, therefore, LIFE Perdix represents the only reintroduction project of a species considered extinct in nature and the effectiveness of its actions can be taken as an example for the implementation of new reintroductions throughout Europe.