Flamingos Are Damaging Risotto Rice Crops In Italy’s Northeast

The beautiful, long-legged birds have been observed to be damaging rice crops of risotto in the northeast parts of Italy as they have been found keeping their voracious eyes on the fields which yield rice for risotto in the province of Ferrara that lies between Venice and Ravenna in Italy. They move the soil and catch molluscs or insects within the water by using their webbed feet.
Due to this, the seedlings in the field are getting affected severely. Rice is also associated with this damage.
To prevent this mess, Farmers are using several techniques to fly these airy creatures away. Sometimes, honking through trucks, banging barrels, and thunderous sounds, such as noises, help to fly them away to another field.

Farmers expressed their lamentation by considering this damage as the newborn children were taken away from them as they had toiled hard in their fields, but the adverse circumstance was created by these marvellous beings of nature, who seemed to take away the fruit of their hard work
 Interestingly, the flamingos seem to have returned from their previous nesting grounds in the neighbouring Comacchio Valleys in a coastal reserve just south of the point where Italy's longest river, the Po, empties into the Adriatic Sea. They were restricted to the lakes of North Africa, parts of Spain and a bit of France’s Camargue region earlier.

Furthermore, farmers stressed that flamingos are beautiful, but their presence needs to be restricted in the fields as the rice cultivation crops are the most expensive and extensive. Some of the farmers have felt disheartened after suffering the losses of their production. However, the studies are yet to be conducted to determine how these flamingos suddenly seek food from fields that have been prepared by the farmers flood their fields from late spring to early summer for germinating newly planted rice seeds. The flamingos are posing a substantial threat till the paddies are drained, which happens after a few weeks.