Hunting in Piedmont: the regional councilor Gian Luca Vignale on the sentence of the Tar, "the first defeat of the anti-hunts".
Only a month ago the animal welfare associations sang victory for the suspension of hunting in Piedmont which they now assumed for certain. The sentence of the TAR today represents a bitter defeat for them.
Certainly paid for by many Piedmontese hunters who have seen the opening postponed, but this choice - that is to make a calendar identical to the ISPRA lines - proved to be the winning TAR.
The limitation, then, of the Sic and of the SPAs will be strongly reduced by a resolution that the Regional Council will approve on Monday morning: in fact, of the 140 Sic and ZPS existing 90 are inside Parks where hunting is already prohibited and will also be excluding those of the provinces of Biella, Vercelli and Novara (having a provincial wildlife plan in which the environmental impact assessment was made). So there will remain only 16 out of 140 areas with a ban on hunting.
This must be a starting point: by November present a new law in line with the other Italian regions and restore the dignity it deserves to hunting.
Gianluca VIGNALE
(12 October 2012)