An unpleasant story
The unfortunate story of the 2023-'24 hunting calendar of the Marche region continues: after the self-inflicted penalties during the approval of the calendar, which also worsened the parts won at the TAR last season, the appeal of the anti-chasers arrived which led to the suspension of three parts of the Resolution last Friday. A very unsatisfactory result, the result of a series of incorrect choices made by the Region despite Federcaccia Marche having warned several times, also indicating ways to guarantee Marche hunters greater certainty regarding the conduct of the current hunting season. The Department, already when drawing up the calendar, had chosen to remove a pre-opening day for quail, to reduce the pre-opening days for wood pigeon and the fighter hunting period, as well as sending ISPRA a forecast of the harvest of larks halved compared to what the National Management Plan approved in 2018 allows.
Certainties for hunters
Despite all the reports from Federcaccia, which demonstrated that the first three points had been won by the Marche Region with a TAR ruling on the previous season's calendar, the Region continued with its penalizing action, justifying it by stating verbatim that "We need to give certainties to hunters, we need to secure the calendar from appeals". Even after this inexplicable position, Federcaccia wrote clearly to the department highlighting further weaknesses in the Resolution, in particular on the reasons, which appeared insufficient compared to the ISPRA opinion, which was much more in-depth than in previous years. Federcaccia had also sent the reasons to be used at the time, which counter deduced the ISPRA opinion point by point. But these suggestions were also totally ignored.
Last year's appeals
It is difficult to understand such rigidity, when the facts demonstrate that last year's appeals were won, including to the Council of State (Sardinia, Umbria, Tuscany), with well-argued resolutions drawn up with the collaboration of the Research Office of our Federation. Only one doubt had been expressed by Federcaccia: that there had been some type of undisclosed agreement with the anti-hunting officers so that they would not appeal. A hypothetical circumstance, certainly not one to boast about, however completely disproved by the facts. The summary of the whole story is that the Marche hunters have lost pre-opening hunting days, lark game bags, fighter hunting days and today find themselves with 20 fewer days of turdid and woodcock hunting compared to their colleagues from neighboring regions such as Umbria, Tuscany and Lazio, not to mention those in the South, such as Puglia and Calabria. Added to this is the day less for the migratory stay, but we don't want to intervene on this.
Federcaccia's conclusions
In conclusion:
There is no need to implement reductions in seasons and days to avoid appeals: anti-hunting agents will appeal anyway.
On the contrary, it is necessary to maintain dates and species as per law 157/92 to counteract the penalties resulting from ISPRA opinions and pressure from the anti-hunting world.
It is necessary to construct reasoned resolutions punctually with respect to the ISPRA opinion and only in this way can we be confident that the appeals will be overcome. Not doing it or doing it badly is suicide for the Region and brings bitter surprises to hunters.
Federcaccia hopes that the Marche Region will capitalize on this failure and accept with a constructive spirit the collaboration that Federcaccia Marche and the National FIdC Studies and Research Office have always offered to all the departments and hunting offices of the Italian Regions having as their only interest to guarantee hunters what laws and regulations allow and which can be obtained with the appropriate preparation. Considering the measures announced by the Councillor, which do not appear to be a solution to all the problems highlighted, Federcaccia Marche asks the President of the Region Francesco Acquaroli for an urgent meeting of all the regional hunting associations to identify the actions necessary to ensure that the rights of hunters Marche are recognized and protected (source: FIDC).