A progressive decay
Have you ever thought about the reasons that led to the decline of settled noble game in Province of Pisa? In your opinion, is this an inexorable phenomenon or is it the result of bad administration? Until about twenty years ago, the ZRCs in the province of Pisa were still reservoirs of natural game which was distributed throughout the territory through capture and/or natural irradiation. Then with the passage of these structures to the ATC the slow decline which has largely compromised the hunting of small resident game, i.e. one of the most traditional and exciting forms of hunting.
The Pisano ATCs
We are always told that the fault lies with the environment, with too many "opportunists", once defined as harmful, and with the increasingly scarce economic resources that ATCs can invest in these wildlife institutes. While this may be true for other areas of Tuscany, the reality of the province of Pisa is very different. In fact, from reading the financial statements published on the ATC Pisani websites we learn that:
• ATC 14 Western Pisa as of 31/12/2022 had a budget surplus of 1.484.000 euros plus an insurance policy of 250.000 euros.
• ATC 15 Eastern Pisa, again as of 31/12/2022, had a budget surplus of approximately 707.000 euros.
In public administrations, the inability to spend resources has always been considered a sign of bad administration. In practice, the Pisan ATCs have not been able to spend (and therefore invest in the territory) the money collected with the fees paid by the hunters. We preferred to spend on mediocre farmed game, often released without acclimatization or using largely inadequate structures.
A treasure to invest
This situation denotes an absolute inability to plan and technically program the territory. How many environmental improvements, incentives for volunteering, acclimatization structures, feeding and watering points, antagonist control, supervision, etc. could they have been achieved instead of causing these structures to deteriorate and their managers, who were increasingly alone and in difficulty, discouraged? Perhaps today, having discovered that there is a little treasure to invest, we will try to carry out some improvised project, but it is difficult not to be skeptical when we see that whoever is, at least in part, responsible for this situation, is still in the driving seat. We hope that this writing of ours has the right dissemination and reaches each hunter and why not, also to those who should guarantee careful management of the territory and fauna, as was foreseen by National Law 157/1992, with the establishment of the territorial hunting areas. In any case, the undersigned associations remain, as always, at complete disposal for the promotion of concrete projects that redevelop the fauna and the territory, guaranteeing serious and valid management to the hunter (source: ANLC Pisa and Enalcaccia Pisa).