Arci Caccia Alessandria: sting on hunters, increased the regional tax for hunting from 77,50 to 100,00 euros and a new tax for wild boar hunting, "you pay more and get less".
The Regional Council of Piedmont and its majority hit hard on the hunters. First, the regional concession fee is increased by € 22,50, then, not satisfied, he introduces a new tax to hunt wild boars. If the ATCs and CAs take over the contents of the Regional Resolution of 26 February last, the hunters will have to put their hand to their sometimes meager wallet and shell out a large sum. Do you want to abolish hunting or reduce it to hunting for a few who have high incomes?
All this happens as pensions and wages lose purchasing power, unemployment rises, the cost of living rises and poverty affects an ever larger number of people and families. The Region wants to make money and affects the less well-off, starting from health and increasingly expensive care (today people care less), to reach even hitting those citizens who still cultivate the oldest passion in the world: hunting.
Here is what the Resolution of the Regional Council 26-2-2013 "requires":
"3. The ATC and CA Management Committees can provide for an economic share of between 10,00 and 60,00 euros for each head of wild boar taken. An identification mark issued in advance by the ATC and CA Management Committees must be applied to the felled garment and the recovery has taken place.
Alternatively, the ATC and CA Management Committees can provide an economic quota for the hunter who intends to practice wild boar hunting in compliance with the following parameters:
• TEAM HUNTER: FROM € 10,00 TO € 300,00
• SINGLE HUNTER: FROM € 10,00 TO € 150,00
The sums collected as above may have a security value and be returned, even if only partially, at the end of the hunting season. The decisions taken on this matter by the Management Committees will be taken into account when allocating the contribution intended for compensation for damages.
4. The Management Committees regulate the payment methods and the consequent obligations and must adopt all the technical initiatives aimed at complying with this fulfillment by the hunters who hunt wild boar species.
5. The sums received in any case are used to carry out the tasks of the Management Committee pursuant to art. 7 of the DGR n. 10-26362 of 28-12-1998 and subsequent amendments and, above all, for compensation for damage caused by wildlife to agricultural production. ".
It will be up to the ATCs to decide if and how to apply the Regional Resolution, but it seems to ARCI Caccia that in periods of such serious crisis, with extensive and growing economic difficulties, it is a mistake to increase the costs to carry out the hunting activity. The Resolution of the GR either does not apply or is done to the minimum allowed.
The hunters are decreasing in number and this is demonstrated by the many lack of reconfirmations to the ATC by the month of March. They stop because the costs are too high, because there are hardly any more hares and pheasants, in addition to the fact that the age advances and there are no new recruits. They stop because there is great uncertainty, the Regional Law is missing and, to date, it is not known whether it will be possible to go hunting, in what period, with what hunting calendar.
It is said that the damage to agricultural production and the environment increases because there are too many wild boars, roe deer and corvids. It is true. But who can contain the expansion phase of these and other species, re-establishing a balanced relationship of compatibility between fauna, environment, territory and agricultural activities? Only the hunters, with a rigorous and planned activity in the collection and containment, in alliance with the farmers, implementing every prevention and damage reduction initiative.
Today, more than ever, it is evident that serious, responsible and environmentally friendly hunting is necessary and indispensable. Other than demonizing hunting and making it more expensive and fraught with obstacles every year. Let's regulate it better and recreate new balances. How the voices of the abolitionists appear and are increasingly out of tune and out of time! ATCs can do many things, but to do them they have to get out of a management that for too many years has been of a bureaucratic and administrative type and project themselves outside. They must put in place multi-year programs and land management projects, they must produce more hares, pheasants, partridges and red partridges in natural environments; they must research, promote and encourage the volunteer work of hunters. Their willingness to give is great. They have to go to the confrontation on the territory with hunters and farmers.
Even the hunting associations must change, in methods and contents; they must stop waging war and find convergences and agreements on the many things to do. Today there is also another big problem, which concerns the forane hunters to be admitted to the ATC.
WE MUST SAY NO TO THE INCREASE IN THE NUMBER OF FORANE HUNTERS.
We must remain below 10% of eligible hunters, as provided for by Regional Law 70/96. In the face of very scarce restocking, made with hares and pheasants of capture (a few hundred); with planned releases of specimens purchased on the free market with little or no survival capacity; with the certainty that in the planned hunting area it will be difficult to meet and embody something; with this state of affairs, it would not be acceptable to increase the number of hunters from other regions.
It would be a slap in the face to the hunters residing in our ATC, in the province and in the region. The ATCs do not aim to collect a few hundred euros more. We work with our human, material and financial strengths, making the most of them. You can do a lot, you need to believe in it and want to work for change, to get out of a wildlife-hunting situation that has gone back twenty years, and not by divine will, but by the fault of men.
Now it is up to the men, the hunters, their leaders in the Associations and ATCs, to bring about the necessary change.
Alexandria, April 9, 2013
ARCI Provincial Hunt Alessandria