The two friendly hosts Ficarra and Picone, my fellow citizens, of Striscia la Notizia always say at the end of each report: “if someone has something to say, we are here”. But as regards hunting and our arguments "there" were not there. We have recently witnessed an unprecedented attack on hunting and hunters by the usual self-styled envoy Edoardo Stoppa. This time in Africa, to talk about big game and Safari. The services were full of lies, inaccuracies, falsehoods and so on and so forth. Artfully mixing legal hunting, on a scientific basis and indispensable for the management of the species and for the economy of those places, with sinister poaching activities. Honestly, we do not expect Stoppa or others to see it as we do, we are open to any kind of criticism and as experienced journalists we know well that the Truth is often and willingly "interpreted" according to who tells it. Therefore nothing quaestio relating to services. I don't expect a liar to come to his senses and tell things as they are. If we also wanted to think that Striscia per voce di Stoppa is in good faith then it is ignorance that has prevailed over everything.
The question, therefore, is simply to give the right of reply! We wrote to the editorial staff of Striscia la Notizia immediately after the airing of the services asking them to have our say. If they had done so, we could have countered argument by subject, data upon data. We would have explained, among other things, that in African countries where hunting is allowed, the number of animals has grown significantly and that the same countries, and the populations, have drawn and still reap enormous environmental and economic benefits for the flow of money that hunters around the world carry. On the contrary, in those countries where hunting has been closed for over forty years, see Kenya, many species are becoming endangered. We would have said that the meat of all the hunted animals is also used entirely to feed entire villages, to give noble proteins to children who are dying of hunger. We would have had the opportunity to reiterate that thanks to hunting today many children can go to school, they can have a better future, they can become protagonists of a change for those countries. Of course, showing a poor Zebra badly crippled by an unhappy shooter, dwelling on those images, has a lot of effect in public opinion, but behind every safari there are so many economic and social interests for those countries that it would have been right to put them on the scale. .
It would have been enough if the conductor had read the official reports of a growing number of biologists from the University of Zimbabwe relating to the studies carried out in the 23 African states where hunting is allowed to understand that at present there is no credible alternative to hunting correctly. managed for the protection of the species and the conservation of ecosystems. It would have been enough to ask the parks, the scouts, the operators in the sector, the governments, to understand that the only resources to be able to fight poaching come from legal hunting and hunters. Sure said it would have been easy, but then they would have had to tell the truth!
We are not so presumptuous as to believe that we have all the answers and all the solutions, but at least we are trying, hard, making mistakes, day after day. You Strip the News what are you doing? You Edoardo Stoppa what are you doing? Give us a solution or you are, as I think you are, part of the problem!
Federico Cusimano