Federcaccia Piemonte makes some clarifications on the appeal presented by the Hunting Associations against the new Hunting Calendar valid for the Hunting 2015/16; amazement at the stance of farmers.
No one will certainly have escaped how our Company is experiencing a very particular, difficult if not dramatic moment, aggravated by the heavy economic crisis that has hit Europe and the whole world, and where the degradation of values, the vain search for new points of reference, has zeroed or almost zeroed the capacity for dialogue: everything immediately becomes brawl, confrontation is conflict, screams take the place of polite and subdued dialogues. This happens in almost every social category, none excluded, but it seems very marked for those whom it is not at all senseless or excessive to define as "the last heroes", those children of the earth who, with the sweat of their brow, and hardly repaid efforts, provide goods essential to human survival: farmers. These honest workers, and it is no coincidence that their sector is defined as the "primary" one of the economy, they are no longer even able to determine the prices of their products, decided elsewhere and without any regard for their profit: it is not ... oil the them, and these friends of ours cannot make a cartel to support the prices, but for everyone it is equally essential. If not more!
Coming to the reasons for this communication, we must here confess our astonishment at having learned the firm and hard stance taken by the agricultural world, or at least by its main representatives, in reference to the appeal presented to the Piedmont Regional Administrative Court by almost all the Hunting Associations recognized against the hunting calendar, recently presented by the Councilor for Agriculture, Hunting and Fishing and approved by the Regional Council on 13 April 2015. This document, in fact, built without consulting any interested party in the least, is seriously penalizing for the our category, absurdly postponing the opening of the hunting season in the Piedmont Region, but it also heavily affects the activities of the agricultural world.
The curious thing is how on the one hand there is a clamor to ask for the intervention of the hunter to contain the numerical explosion of wild boar populations, while on the other hand it is possible to accept the cut of two weeks of hunting in September, and just when the animals are particularly invasive and harmful, with most of the agricultural crops (corn and grapes in the first place) still to be achieved. Many Piedmontese ATCs and CAs also participated in the appeal against the Region, but just as many were prevented from doing so by the hostility manifested towards the measure by the Agricultural Associations which, within hunting areas and alpine areas, elect six representatives, the same number of hunters, and can thus be decisive in any vote linked to hunting or land management.
It is only useful to remind everyone how the statistics of the last few seasons give us irrefutable data: in the first two weeks of hunting, with six possible outings on the ground, Piedmontese hunters normally shoot down an average of 2.500 wild boars, animals that in the same period will now devastate fields and crops. The questions therefore arise spontaneously: do farmers know these things? Do they understand the consequences of their decisions? Waiting for an answer, which perhaps will never come, we just have to add our final consideration: obviously even the latest heroes ... have their own kamikaze!
Federcaccia Piedmont
(June 25, 2015)