Arci Caccia: Tuscany, at the Regional Council the hearings of the hunting and environmental associations were held by the 1st and 2nd council commissions.
This morning, April 3, the Hunting and Environmental Associations (the farmers had already been heard previously) participated in the hearings of the 1st and 2nd Commission of the Tuscan Regional Council regarding the simplification law which also contains some proposals for changes for the hunting regulations. In particular, the text of the law provides for the establishment of CAV (Hunting Assistance Centers), ie structures managed by the Hunting Associations aimed at providing services to hunters in subsidiarity with the Public Administration.
In other words, the CAVs will be able to carry out a series of practices for which it is necessary to go to the hunting offices of the Provinces. Instead, by contacting a CAV, the hunter can, for example, make the renewal of the posting, the registrations in the various hunting registers, changes concerning the detention of live calls, etc. All this is independent of the timetables and the location, often centralized and difficult to reach, of the hunting offices of the Provinces.
Also very important is the proposal to insert a paragraph in LR 3/94 that relieves the ATC managers from personal responsibility for the financial stability of the Sector they are governing. This in particular as regards the compensation for damage to crops which will take place within the limits of the budget available to the ATC, thus relieving the President and the other members of the Committee from any personal responsibility. This is necessary to protect the representatives of the Sectors who hold this position in a voluntary and honorary way and who find themselves leading a body with only managerial and non-decisional functions and without financial autonomy.
Finally, the bill provides for the possibility of launching the Hunting Calendar by act of the Executive (and no longer by law) if in the coming weeks the Constitutional Court pronounces itself in a negative way about the possibility of drawing up the calendar by legislative act. Arci Caccia, which had been advocating these amendments for months, has expressed a favorable opinion on the proposed amendments to the law, asking the Commissions, as far as possible, to speed up the approval process. Our Association has also requested to remedy some distortions of the regional law on animal welfare as regards the minimum size of the boxes (which today are 8 square meters per dog) and the methods for transporting the dogs themselves.
The Council Commissions have considered it impossible to insert these proposed amendments to the simplification law as they are not relevant to the subject of the law itself, postponing the discussion of the subject to a specific law proposal. Arci Caccia has therefore invited the Councilors to do their utmost to ensure that the law on animal welfare in those specific points can also be amended shortly.
The present hunting world has unanimously acknowledged these proposals and their analysis, while the WWF, the only environmental association present, has not lost the opportunity to attack the hunting world by side and not on issues of merit. The WWF has even proposed to cut all funding to the Hunting Associations that the Region pays as a percentage of regional taxes. Unfortunately, these gentlemen forget that it is the money of the hunters who, in this way, even if in a small part, go back to those who pay them in the form of services and protection.
Of course they did not complain when, in the presence of greater resources, they saw their initiatives always financed with the money of the usual hunters. Precisely the same ones that receive large public subsidies for the most disparate initiatives, such as the Raptors Recovery Center in Semproniano (GR) which, sadly, in these days would be the subject of an investigation by the Court of Auditors for economic and financial management would seem not too transparent and could have unduly stolen money from the public treasury and therefore from the pockets of Italians, at least according to what we learn from information found on the web.
Of course, as citizen-hunters, who are not animated by hatred of anyone, we hope that this is unfounded news.
3 April 2013
Arci Caccia Tuscany