Federcaccia Salerno on the approximate and sometimes incompetent management of the hunting activity in the Campania Region and in the Province of Salerno, “The point on hunting, but what hunting!”.
Speaking today of hunting in Campania and more specifically in the province of Salerno means undertaking a discourse that has nothing sensible, clear, organic or at least has a logical thread. Affirming these things, for a passionate "addict" for hunting, is certainly serious and not being able to affect the decisions that change the rules of Diana's world in her region is mortifying, especially bearing in mind that whoever writes these words is the president of the largest hunting association in the Province of Salerno, about 4.000 members. It is no coincidence that the number of members of the Federation has been quantified, because many of those who are in the control room and who decide the hunting "things" are not the expression of such a number of voters or are even external characters placed on those seats not it is well known for what purpose but with results that are within everyone's reach… The disarray is total !! At the regional level, only in the years of my presidency (there are just three), I have seen the helm of the hunt change hands six times between managing directors, councilors and presidential advocates, the political class has not been able to propose at the helm of the Regional Department someone who was minimally connoisseur of the hunting world or who at least was able to understand its problems. Deciding the rules of the game without "following" the advice of those who play that game, pretending to "listen" to everyone and want to summarize the proposals, has only led to a worsening of the legislation, but above all, to total confusion of rules that displease everyone and, if we add to this the internal struggles and with the opposition, to the lengthening of the times of each decision: the only result is “absolute chaos”.
Examples are the amendments to Law 26/2012 which had to be approved in a short time in order to respond to the observations of the State Attorney and the Constitutional Court. After a first passage in the VIII Regional Commission, without any sharing with the hunting world, they were strongly opposed by the representatives of the hunters to the point of being able to have them reworked, but brought into the classroom several times they were not approved due to internal maneuvers and disputes between exponents of the same majority who also lent their side to attacks by the opposition. The laws are certainly the prerogative of the political class, but a policy, deaf to the proposals of the users of the rules that they want to approve, appears presumptuous and certainly, having no specific competence and experience of the problems of each individual hunting discipline, it would be advisable to make use of those made available by those who face these issues on a daily basis.
The Campania "model" is not acceptable, the rules of the hunting world in our region cannot depend on some official, probably "anti-hunt", who more or less artfully organizes himself on how to put a spoke in the wheel of hunters. An employee of a normal company after several mistakes, perpetrated over the years always on the same problem, would have been fired or at least removed from that position to avoid further foolishness; in the Campania Region, on the other hand, for years, many years, appeals to the TAR have been suffered and lost, gross errors have been made on calendars, procedures and various decrees, but the regional team remains unassailable !!!
Hunting is regulated in each Region by a specific law which incorporates the guidelines of the national one (157/1992) and of the various European regulations. Good! I would like to understand why and by what criterion there are so many differences between the various regional laws and especially between the various hunting calendars where times, species and game boxes vary even between neighboring regions, most of the time with the greatest restrictions for hunters from Campania. The damage that Diana's people are suffering in our region are probably irreparable, her world only marginally affects politics and many times only for what concerns the electoral and economic side that this represents. All this is also evident in the situation of the ATCs which, after the latest amendments to law 26/2012, will become powerless caravans, power that will pass into the hands of the Region, but containers where hunters pour more than one million euros every year ( € 31,00 x approximately 45.000 hunters) and of which they have every right to ask for an account.
The Region should also give an account (see LL.RR. of Campania n. 8/96 - art. 40 and n. 26/2012 - art. 40 - Utilization of proceeds: omissis. All the revenues referred to in this law are used for the purposes that it sets itself.) of the approximately three million euros that it collects annually from the regional tax (€ 66,00 x approximately 45.000 hunters) and of which it is not clear where they end up given that the Provinces, Delegated Bodies to the management of hunting, very little of this money comes, to the point that the Province of Salerno (the only one in Campania to have done so) has had to establish an additional tax (€ 50,00) in order to collect the certificate of qualification for hunting activity (hunting examination) because it is so dry that it can no longer guarantee even the normal functioning of the Hunting Office. And all the money that the hunters of the Campania region pay into the coffers STATE / REGION / PROVINCE what happens to it and how is it really spent? ... we are talking about more than TWELVE MILLION euros.
The world of the Hunt is a wonderful universe and at the same time mysterious to the point of hypnotizing those who approach it, but certainly not to the point of making them accept the part of the indigenous with the first colonizers who traded pearls in exchange for necklaces and mirrors. Because perhaps this is the part that the political forces want us to interpret, they promise us great things and then offer us “services” in grand style; while on the one hand they profess to be sympathizers of hunting and committed to solving its problems, on the other they prepare laws (see the new proposal - Reg. Gen. N. 327 - "Reorganization of regional protected areas, of the urban park system of regional interest , as well as the sites of the Natura 2000 network. ") the implementation of which would effectively close the Hunt in Campania.
This new legislative proposal tends to establish other protected areas (ecological connection areas, joining areas between existing protected areas with the same protection constraints), to attribute the management and protection responsibilities of Natura 2000 areas to the Park Authorities (for which the SPAs and the SIC would be controlled and managed by the Park Authorities) and finally the constitution of the Contiguous Areas to the Regional Parks which would put the whole world of hunting in Campania in total confusion to the point of making any hunting activity impossible. The protected areas in Campania are now found everywhere and continue to be born and proliferate everywhere, certainly this continuous sprouting has made a whole series of things that pass through the seats that these institutions offer (often well reimbursed...) , the contributions to which one can access but also to the power and the image they give towards public opinion. Who knows why in all the Committees of the protected areas, maintained with public money, the components of the environmental world are present but excluding the hunters (even if bearers of similar interests), while in the ATC (Territorial Areas of Hunting, in which the only money is that of hunters) there are environmental associations which are also granted contributions to implement projects in the area.
Passively accepting the role of sacrificial victim I do not think can be appreciated by the hunting world, already too many times to practice our passion we have had to swallow absurd and meaningless compromises. In other parts of the world, in Europe, but also in Italy, hunting is seen as an activity of civil life, in its negative but also in its positive sides, a driving force for the economy, jobs and commercial activities. they have enormous potential in the “ars venandi” induced. An example should be some Italian regions which, even if they do not have hunting territories like ours, invest in it with indisputable economic successes. Unlike in Campania, you see the battles against the Hunting Companies and the training camps, everything is done to discourage those who make it a life and work activity of our passion. The absurdity is highlighted in the consideration that: while the resources of hunters deployed to be able to practice their passion are often used to solve problems of a very different nature (see holes in health care, garbage and other forms of economic urgency), the hunting world is accused of exploiting public money by receiving princely funding.
It is clear the reference to the ignorant (ignored thing) statement of Mrs. Brambilla who certainly did not know, or preferred not to investigate the problem, that those approximately four million euros (now less than two million) that the Italian State pays to the hunting associations they are not a contribution but rather an additional, established many years ago and paid in addition to the government concession tax, to finance them and which therefore are money for hunters who self-finance (comparable to the share that workers pay on paycheck to trade union representatives and I do not think anyone will allow themselves to say that the Italian state donates that money as a contribution to the unions). The maximum was then reached with the curtailment and forfeiture, by the State, before 20%, now 50% of this additional charge and all under the authority and in complete autonomy.
The music at the provincial level does not change ... in the same period we had three Councilors who are not experts in hunting matters and of which two are not even an expression of the territory, but certainly "external" (technicians?). The damage is evident, even minimal planning is missing: how can an Assessor plan the hunt not knowing if tomorrow he will still be in his place or work qualitatively without having control of his team ... To evaluate the commitment of the provincial political forces towards of the hunting world it is enough to consider the repopulations made by the Administration in the last three years: twenty thousand euros (equal to a few thousand pheasants), compared to about two million euros paid into the regional coffers in the same period. If the ATCs had not intervened with consistent inputs made with the hunters' quotas, the Salerno area would not have had any significant restoration of wildlife.
Nor is it enough to donate a few thousand euros to the Associations for the computerization of applications and procedures related to hunting to feel at ease with the conscience, moreover computerization desired by the bodies themselves and which has led to enormous reductions in work for the Administrations, assigning, instead, to the Hunting associations an indispensable role in order not to further abandon the hunter who does not practice his passion on the web but searches for territories and game in order to be able to profess his great love, possibly with balanced and certain rules in consultation with the rest of the hunting, agricultural and environmentalist world. . The laws, the old regional 8/1996 and the new 26/2012, in art. 36 c. 8 provide for the ATCs: "The ATC management bodies are based in the competent Provincial Administrations ... omitted .. the Provinces also ensure technical and administrative support." Maybe I'm wrong but the legislator wanted to understand that the provincial administration had to provide a seat, the technical means (equipment and office machines) and the personnel for the daily management of the work.
The Province of Salerno has understood something else entirely: having assessed that these are institutions that manage "only" from eight to nine thousand applications / registrations, it has established that a room of 20 square meters would have been sufficient as a seat (as a secretariat, as a representation and also as a meeting room for the 13 (19) members of the Management Committee), an employee of the Province in the spare time of his daily work as a work support and for everything else they arrange. Is this the consideration that the Administration of Salerno gives to its 11.500 hunters who, in any case, pay approximately 350.000 euros a year into the coffers of the two Salerno ATCs?
But the problem is really evident in the regulation of wild boar hunting where, after many years with serious problems of coexistence and territory between the beltlai teams, a tacit agreement was reached between them with the subdivision of the locations where to practice hunting. . The choice of assigning fixed zones, imposing confusing and approximate rules (to date, it is not clear to practitioners of wild boar hunting whether the current regulation is the one printed in thousands of copies and distributed on several occasions by the provincial Hunting Office or the one published on the internet on the official website of the Province or the one that runs between the offices and the huntsmen in more or less legible photocopies) that are not matched in any other part of Italy, or even artfully modified under the pressure of the politician on duty, has not seen other than the proliferation of new teams with the need to find further territory, but above all, the rush of each group to support politicians, officials in charge or trade associations, ending up with increasing confusion and making every possible management of this hunt.
The continuous search for an encounter with the base (the hunters) is certainly a positive and meritorious fact, but the rules are decided with the trade unions (the hunting associations) and not with the workers (the hunters), otherwise it might seem more a political-electoral campaign that does not want to know the real needs of hunters. The role of each component of the "mechanism" should be clear and respectful of the other parts, the leaps forward and flexing the muscles ... it is now a thing of the past and does not belong to the management of the modern hunting universe. Is it really the fault of all the hunting associations, of their division, of the interests that revolve around this way, or of those who, for purposes very different from hunting, would like to "milk" their milk? With all this, what Hunt do we want to talk about?
Luigi Spera
FIdC Salerno President
(21 July 2013)