Justified outburst
“Do you want some bears? Don't worry, after having eliminated the 3 problematic ones, we have another 70 to move: for anyone who wants, we are available, come and get them ». This is the outburst of the president of the Province, Maurizio Fugatti, who blurted out at the press conference against animal rights associations and "living room" experts. The death of XNUMX-year-old runner it was the straw that broke the camel's back. Trentino which, partly for tourist reasons and quite a bit for the usual pressure from living room animal rights activists, began in 99 to introduce a couple of Slovenian bears thanks to the "Life Ursus" project, is now found in a sea of trouble. Faunal, environmental and above all public order and safety problems deriving from a population of over 100 plantigrades which are double the "optimal" number initially estimated by the "old" INFS in about 50 specimens.
Parallels with the wolf
But that's not all, because all the experts agree that in ten years there will be more than 300 bears in a wonderful but also heavily anthropized area, especially from a touristic point of view, in summer and winter, like the Trentino area. The same phenomenon that characterized the wolf population has been repeated, albeit for different reasons, which by now, according to some researchers, is around 5000 specimens, an absolutely unsustainable number for a country like ours. Just think that in Sweden, which has an area almost double that of Italy, around 460 specimens have been counted which the government and the scientists have deemed excessive, deciding to cut down at least 75 to maintain a tolerable level. In the case of the wolf, the dead have not yet escaped but if serious measures are not taken, this will be a not so remote eventuality, while the farmers and also the owners of pets are crying, who are increasingly in the crosshairs of large predators.
Animal rights slogans
Despite all this, the law is still dictated by the most extremist fringes of hard and pure animalism which completely ignores the word "management" which does include catches and various movements but - as in the case of problematic bears - also culling. The lesson that comes to us from Europe is simple: "The pitiful doctor makes the stinking plague" and therefore some wild species must be managed, keeping them within tolerable limits not only for public safety but precisely for the well-being of the wild themselves. But our brave living room animal rights activists don't really like the examples that come from all over the place, and the strict lessons in faunal-environmental management that are taught to us, and continue to shout hysterically "Hands off the bear" or " Let no one touch the wolves." This is not a question of opening the hunt to one or the other: no Italian hunter asks for it. It is only a matter of being dutifully and rigorously pragmatic, without ideology getting the better of us, and the president of the autonomous province of Trento Maurizio Fugatti did well to speak with a commendable and rare clarity for the administrators and politicians of our house (Paolo Sparvoli, president of the National Free Hunting Association).