It is November 11, a in the prestigious headquarters ofGeorgofili Academy, the interesting conference on the reform of the Community Agricultural Policy and future interactions with wildlife management.
In a room occupied to the maximum capacity allowed by the anti Covid rules and with a large number of participants in remote connection, after the opening of the works by the Academician Prof. Osvaldo La Marca, the intervention of the National President followed by Federcaccia Massimo Buconi, who framed the general theme around which the reports of the speakers who alternated at the table took place.
In particular, President Buconi explained how the reform of the New CAP, currently being approved, after a long gestation phase, must also have the hunting sector of our country among the protagonists and any reasoning on agriculture, environment and biodiversity must necessarily also involve the wildlife management system, operated by hunters.
“Federcaccia wants to redesign the relationships between hunting and society, hunting and agriculture, hunting and environmentalism - declared the President of Federcaccia -. The anti-venatorial pressures arrive at the paradoxical result of causing damage to the same environment that it is said to want to protect, because without the work of hunters there is virtually no form of protection and enhancement. Biodiversity management sustainability - he concluded - must be practiced and not 'predicated' themes ".
The speakers' expositions then unfolded trying to develop a reflection on the future agricultural perspective for our country, also in relation to the legal framework and the future economic resources deriving from the new CAP, in a context where we currently record a constant increase in the populations of the ungulate fauna, while on the contrary the decline continues for many fauna species, including protected ones, belonging both to the avifauna and to the small sedentary game, historically always present in our territories. Can sustainable agriculture that produces environmental biodiversity determine the conditions for habitats to be favorable to valuable wildlife species and migratory fauna?
From the reports of Professor Marco Olivi of the Ca 'Foscari University of Venice and of Professor Ferdinando Albisinni of the University of Tuscia, analyzing the legislative aspects of the new proposal, it emerges that 157/92 was conceived as a law focused solely on the protection of fauna and aimed at its management. "We have a problem of balancing of interests that the new CAP does not solve" underlined the two speakers, also highlighting how in the design of the Common Policy "The bureaucracy linked to agricultural policies increases and also on animal welfare no balancing of interests, leaving, from a regulatory point of view, a void of address and application ".
Among the aspects of particular interest is the emphasis by Professor Olivi on the sentence of the Constitutional Court of January 2021, which recognizes that the expansion of the subjects authorized to inspect fauna by a Region is an increase in the minimum level of environmental protection. The pronouncement represents an important opening and it follows that the minimum standard of protection cannot be set univocally, but is linked to the environmental and faunal conditions of the territory, thus recognizing a role to local authorities that has always been advocated and recognized until now. valid only at the state level.
Professor Nicola Lucifero of the University of Florence highlighted how the issue of damage from wildlife in agriculture also lacks solutions on both a state and regional legal level: "Everything is based on the perspective of damage prevention, which however is moves in an environmental and European regulatory context that has greatly changed.
The role of hunting converges with environmental protection and biodiversity conservation. It is necessary that with a change of perspective it also passes through the role of the farmer ".
For Francesco Postorino, representing the national Confagricoltura, the general assessment of the CAP reform is negative, ending up constituting only a further bureaucracy bureaucracy. “The wildlife landscape has improved in some ways in recent years - he underlined - but it has not been possible to manage it. Redundancies of certain species at the expense of others must be brought back to acceptable numbers. We need a new pact between hunting and agriculture. Hunting is a value that has never been sufficiently exploited. Modernizing it does not, however, mean upsetting it: traditions, traditional hunts must be protected ". The 157/92, says Postorino, must be revised, re-evaluating and making the figure of the farmer and the agricultural enterprise more central, in order to reach the necessary and new balances between hunting, agriculture and territorial governance.
Also for Giordano Pascucci, director of the Cia Toscana, the reform of 157/92 cannot be postponed any more even if it will take a time that the agricultural enterprise can no longer wait.
“The convergence of what I have heard on many points that need revision, starting with the management of protected areas, but also marginal and uncultivated ones, bodes well”.
Professor Marco Apollonio, University of Sassari, underlined how the variation of the territory in recent decades has seen the depopulation of the countryside, the abandonment of wandering pastoralism and an increase in forests and protected areas which has favored an exponential increase of some species at the expense of others. In fact, ungulates have increased not only in Italy but throughout Europe, with consequences both for agricultural production and for the environment.
Prof. Francesco Sorbetti Guerri illustrated the issue of damage from wildlife from the point of view of prevention systems applied to the forest heritage, to animal and human health risks, to road traffic, to soil conservation.
Doctor Michele Sorrenti, coordinator of the Federcaccia Studies and Research Office illustrated the role of hunters in maintaining habitat and biodiversity and what they can do within the possibilities offered by the new CAP, also addressing some agricultural practices, which we know are risky for certain wild species.
"The hunting world - said Sorrenti - is wrongly considered useful only in the containment of surplus species while there are countless national and European initiatives carried out by hunters for the conservation of agricultural habitats and above all of humid environments, also engaging in areas closed to hunting activities or in projects whose positive effects concern only partially, sometimes even minimal, species that can be hunted in favor of all biodiversity ". For Italy he presented some examples related to crops to be lost or management interventions in humid environments with economic investments to be borne entirely by hunters.
“The new CAP can become a tool for enhancing the environment and environmental recovery. The hunting world can be a stimulus in this, also making the farmer perceive the economic advantages of a different management of the agricultural business by making them become partners of an environmental improvement whose advantages would be for everyone ”concluded Sorrenti.
Doctor Michele Bottazzo, of the FIdC Studies and Research Office went into greater detail on the commitment that Federcaccia has made to make the position of hunters felt in the regional application of development plans linked to the new CAP: from the presentation of technical studies to local projects, to the indication of useful measures for wildlife shared in partnership tables with farmers. “Investing in agricultural environments means investing in the environments that most affect the presence of both sedentary and migratory wildlife for cultivation practices. Among the practical proposals put forward by FIdC, disposable crops, arable crops for small areas, maintenance of meadows and pastures, maintenance of uncultivated margins, maintenance of stubble by postponing plowing. All interventions that do not bring particular economic burdens for the farmer, reabsorbable and of great importance for the overall biodiversity ".
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At the end of the speeches, the national vice president Moreno Periccioli intervened in an incisive manner to underline how all the interventions revealed the unmissable and unrepeatable opportunity provided to hunters by the new CAP.
“An opportunity and a challenge - said Periccioli - that we have already taken up and in which Federcaccia is seriously committed.
National law 157/92 requires a profound revision; leaving the popular profile that distinguishes it to hunting, it is now necessary to strengthen its technical and scientific aspect based on the principle of 'wildlife management'. I consider it important - underlined Periccioli - what emerged on the need for a new pact between Hunting and Agriculture, evoked by Postorino. Only hunters and farmers are the subjects who can maintain, increase and enhance the wildlife in our territory. Also from this point of view, reviewing the role of the Atc is now not only opportune but necessary, as is the law 157/92 ".
Periccioli concluded his speech with an invitation to the Academy to promote an initiative that on these issues can act as a place and time for meeting, comparison and synthesis, between the various stakeholders, whose conclusions can only be indisputable. from a technical-scientific point of view and an authoritative and qualified basis for comparison
