The LIFE Natura PLUTO project
Every year, hundreds of house and wild animals die in Italy after ingesting poison baits. Victims even include rare and protected wild animals, such as bears and wolves, and many birds of prey like griffon vultures and red kites.
The LIFE PLUTO Project consists of several synergistic actions to prevent and combat the use of poison in Central and Southern Italy, thus helping to preserve protected species that are susceptible to this threat.
Main actions include the creation and use, by the State Forestry Corps, of six Anti-poison Dog Units, an essential instrument to detect poison baits and carcasses, and to rapidly and effectively remove them.
The LIFE PLUTO Project also aims at training staff to adequately manage poisoning cases, at involving institutional stakeholders and at sensitising local population to encourage reporting of suspected cases.
In the Gran Sasso-Laga National Park, the LIFE Project will make it possible, among other things, to carry out specific activities to prevent the use of poison, such as the setting up of feeding stations for birds of prey (“carnai”), to be supplied in collaboration with local livestock farms.


A ten pages brochure describes how the LIFE PLUTO project enabled to create a system for preventing and tackling the illegal use of poison which is contributing to the protection of biodiversity, especially of those species which have an unfavourable conservation status.
Read more...The LIFE PLUTO project enabled to develop a system which can detect the illegal use of poison, prevent it, manage the poisoning cases in an appropriate manner and mitigate the impact of poison on wildlife.
Read more...The final conference of the LIFE PLUTO project "Wildlife poisoning - Measures to tackle the illegal use of poison and mitigate its impact on European wildlife" will take place online (in Italian and English) on the 25th of november 2020, 10-12,30.
Read more...On 25 November 2020, between 10.00am and 12.30pm, the congress “Wildlife poisoning – Measures to tackle the illegal use of poison and mitigate its impact on European wildlife” will take place in streaming mode. The event will be attended by experts working on the issue of poison use in many European and African areas.
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