When ideas come together with doing. In the municipality of Mordano, in the province of Bologna, it exists an area of about 6 ha., adjacent to Emiliano-Romagnolo canal, called "Le Vallette" in which there are the artesian wells that since the beginning of the last century have supplied the city of drinking water Massalombarda. The area is divided into 3 ha. reforestation with native plants such as oaks, willows, poplars, cats, etc. which formed a small biotope, and 3 ha. of humid area which, although not a valley area, has interesting characteristics. Primarily from an ecological point of view, as for more than a century no pesticides or fungicides have been used and therefore there are now rare beetles and carabids, but also from a hunting point of view as it is located close to a vast area of continuously expanding quarries where hunting is prohibited and where, during migration, many aquatic species find refuge.
Over time, the area has been largely colonized by the “quadrello” (weed bunting), which, as all valley hunters know, attracts teals and mallards. The wet area since the beginning of the last century was used by hunters of the Federcaccia of Massalombarda for hunting purposes and for frog fishing. In 1998 the management was taken away from the Federcaccia di Massalombarda and assigned to another association which for twenty years managed the area according to privatistic logic. In the meeting for the inauguration of the section council of the Federcaccia di Massalombarda in 2014, at the motion of the president, the proposal to take action in order to bring the management of the area back to the section itself was unanimously approved. In 2018, after the existing agreement expired, a public tender was launched by the property for the assignment of a new management, from which the Federcaccia di Massalombarda section was assigned.
The board has therefore prepared a regulation according to which all the hunters of the section were able to participate in the draw for the allocation of hunting days. The drawn members then took action to carry out the mowing, flood the area and arrange the stalking that were in conditions of total abandonment, in order to be able to exercise the hunting activity again. To achieve this result, the FIdC of Massalombarda had to overcome many moral and material difficulties put in place by the previous management, as well as being the subject of defamatory articles in the adverse press. The return of the management of the "Vallette" to the FIdC section of Massalombarda has made it possible to recover a centuries-old tradition and to administer the hunting activity in a democratic and without any profit, allowing the hunters of the section to practice valley hunting in a social form and at an affordable cost.