Wildelife in the Park of Cilento
Cilento being such a vast, complicated and sparsely popolated area, one would expert a greater variety of wildlife that cannot be seen elsewhere. Unfortunately, this not the case. Although there are large empty spaces and huge forests, unaccessible gorges with streams, the mounains with vast deserted highlands that make up the National Park of Cilento. The fauna is still in conditions that do not require urgent protective intervention.. The brown bear has not been here for centuries now; and yet, it must have lived in these places as in most area of the Appenine chain. So, the largest meat eating animall is the wolf (canis lupus). Wolves are very shy, suspicious animals, that try to avoid man. Only occasionally do they appoach unaccessible dump places to enrich their diet. One can more often see the badger (meles meles) and the fox (vulpis vulpis) that lives in the woods, seldom on farmed lands and above all in bushy, abandoned areas with hedges and enclosures where its preys ( mice and insect eating animals) more often take shelter. It is easy to see almost everywhere the unmistakable traces of the hare (lepus europaeus), a kind of local hare that has been protected after the Nationl Park Authority has forbidden hunting.
The wood is the natural environment of other interesting marten-like animals, such as the pine-marten (martes martes), the beech-marten (martes faina), and the wild cat, (felis silvestris). The polecat (mustela putorius) prefers to live near water springs where it can feed on anurans, but it can rarely be seen, and only at night. Water is also the natural habitat of the otter. We must say that the river otter is on the brink of extinction, there being only between 50 and 100 left and most of them live in the Cilento rivers: Sele, Calore, Mingardo, Sammaro, Bussento and other Cilento rivers; all these rivers offer the river otter the last chance for survival. Other animals whose numbers will certainly increase are the red deer (cervus elaphus) and the roe deer (cercus capreolus), since the National Park Authority will guarantee the protection of their habitats.
On the contrary, the wild boar (sus scropha) is causing problems due to overpopulation, as it is highly proliphic. Oak woods and chestnut woods are its favourite habitat, that is, not very high mountains. However, when there are no chestnuts in the woods, it also visits pasture land and meadows looking for roots, bulbs and larvae, which it digs with its snout In the mixed woods where, along with small fruits hazelnuts also abound, smaller animals can be found, such as the small dormouse (muscardinus avellanarius) that winters hidden in nests hanging between bushes, the bigger grey dormouse (glis glis) and the variegated oak mouse (eliomys quercinus) Although some think that the squirrel (sciurus vulgaris) is not to be found here any more, others claim to have seen it. It may be true, as the meridionalis subspecies dark fur squirrel with a white spot on the breast exists in the Appenini mountain chain in south Italy. The oak wood, but also the chestnut and the beech-tree wood is the ideal habitat to watch the multicoloured jay (garrulus glandarius) flight, the sparrow-hawk’s (accipiter nisus) powerful and winding flight and to hear the sudden flapping of the startled woodcock’s (scolopax rusticola) flight; this bird prefers to spend the winter scratching about among the leaves of the undergrowth.
In the crowns of the tallest trees one can see the wood pigeon (Columba palumbus), whereas the missel-thrush (turdus viscivorus) prefers the open oak woods. A wood dweller is also the green woodpecker (picus viridis), the red woodpecker (dendrocopus major) and the black woodpecker (dendrocopus martius). The eagle (Aquila chrysaetos), the queen of the mountains, nests on the Cervati massif. The difficult and inhospitable environment of the rocky cliffs is the favourite place for other birds of prey like the eagle-owl (Bubo bubo), the windhover (falco tinnunculus), a small red and grey feathered bird of prey that hovers still in the air over meadows or dry land waiting for the prey (usually a small mouse or a lizard ) to come out in the open. Finally we must not forget the hawk (falco peregrinus).
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