The President of Federcaccia Lombardy, Avv. Lorenzo Bertacchi, took part in the Round Table "Wildlife and Poaching - Old and new threats to a precious asset" held at Palazzo Pirelli - Lombardy Region on 25 February 2022 organized by the 5Stelle Movement. To defend the reasons for the hunting world, to explain our point of view, to reply to inaccuracies and any falsehoods, you have to put your face to it, get on the ground of confrontation and make our reasoning prevail. And this is what our regional president did, with courage and determination, taking part in the debate; below are some excerpts from the speech by Bertacchi.
"I accepted with pleasure the invitation of General Furlan and the Regional Councilor Verni (M5S) to participate in this panel discussion because the problem of poaching is a plague for hunting and for hunters, and it is an opportunity to present our point of view too, to explain what is also our perception of the phenomenon. And my presence here today is meant to be a strong and distinctive signal that Hunting and Poaching are not and cannot be synonymous, nor can they be superimposed. The Poaching for us hunters it is a wound that bleeds three times:
In the first place for the same reason why poaching is condemned by all: these are crimes committed against fauna, against the environment, against the common heritage; and this is true with reference to all the faunal heritage, but obviously it is all the more serious as regards species in a bad state of conservation or worse that they are returning to painstakingly repopulate the lost areas.
Secondly, since poaching perpetrated to the detriment of sedentary species (from hare to deer, from pheasant to chamois) is a direct damage in terms of management of the venable heritage. It is useless to go around it: the hunter has a real interest in having an important wildlife heritage, for the simple fact that if there were no game there would not be hunting either, and the poaching of a black grouse rather than a roe deer represents not only a illicit depletion of the common good, but it is perceived by the hunter as a real theft to his detriment;
Thirdly, in terms of communication in society, also due to the lack of knowledge of rules governing hunting, it is very difficult to understand the profound difference between hunting and poaching.
The problem is even greater as some associations whose ultimate goal is not so much the fight against poaching, but the closure of hunting, exploit the phenomena of poaching through communication campaigns that modify - for the worse - the perception of society with respect to hunting, not with respect to poaching phenomenon.
An example is the campaign I saw a few days ago in which the photo of a robin killed in a snap trap (the infamous sep) is posted with the title "76% of Italians are against hunting". Given that the act of poaching is already intolerable in itself, you understand well that for us hunters it becomes even more problematic, and this even though a distorted use is made of the fact-crime. " Many points were touched by the President Bertacchi but a reflection on the theme of tradition seems very interesting to us. “However, it must be clear that the practices rooted in certain areas and once carried out legally are particularly hard to forget and overcome. It is in fact, like it or not, of conducts that today are still tolerated on a social level and of communities in the areas in which they are rooted, to the point that those who commit them not only feel justified by a sort of community placet, but almost feel like a romantic champion who resists harassment.
But this passage serves to understand that certain forms of poaching can only be overcome with a cultural commitment and not simply with repression, regardless of whether they are carried out by a license holder or not. In conclusion, I believe that the issue of poaching should be the subject of an objective examination by all the parties involved, to find a way to bring the contrast back into the context of a shared initiative that has as its effective purpose the fight against poaching, without making it an instrument of “Social delegitimization” of lawful hunting. By moving in this direction, and perhaps without considering taboo the exercise in strictly controlled conditions of traditional activities such as that of catching huntable species through the historical installations (the roccoli) which represent an enormous cultural, architectural and landscape heritage, I believe that the common goal of drastically reducing the acts of poaching against fauna and in particular against birds could have a decisive turning point. " (source: Federcaccia Brescia)