Günther Rabensteiner, provincial president ofACAA - South Tyrolean Hunters Association, federated association of Federcaccia, sent a few days ago to the director of "il Giornale" Alessandro Sallusti a position taken by the Association regarding the article on the killing ofeagle a Gais published by the newspaper. This is the text:
"Dear Dr. Sallusti,
in reference to the article by Tiziana Paolucci published in il Giornale del 09.06.2020 We would like to point out as the South Tyrolean Hunters Association on the sad story of the eagle killed in Val Pusteria some aspects that have been ignored and which instead should be considered in order not to give a distorted or unbalanced narrative of the whole story.
First of all we would like to underline that our hunting community (over 6.000 members) first has every interest in collaborating in the ongoing investigation to try to identify - and certainly not cover - the person responsible for the ignoble gesture that, despite the title of the aforementioned article being defined as a "hunter", has nothing to do with the spirit that animates the hunt in South Tyrol, where the regulation is very strict and the management is transparent.
The sustainable exploitation of huntable fauna, in the sense of a targeted collection that allows a healthy and balanced development of the species, and the conservation of the habitats and biodiversity of our mountains are the principles that traditionally inspire hunting in South Tyrol. There are numerous interventions and activities put in place by South Tyrolean hunters in favor of non-huntable species as well. Also with regard to protected species, such as the eagle in this case, we would like to emphasize that our provincial legislation has always been particularly restrictive and placed the eagle under guardianship as early as 1956, or twenty years before this was provided for by the national law of 1977.
The controls on the correct behavior of our hunting community are tightened, so much so that the episode of the killed eagle was brought to light by one of our game wardens, Marcus Kaiser (and not Günther Rabensteiner, as erroneously reported in the article), since our association is also involved in hunting surveillance together with the Provincial Forest Authority. South Tyrolean hunters respect the rules, whoever has made such a reprehensible gesture cannot be defined as a hunter (and if it is - and this has yet to be proved - it will certainly not be in the future), nor can it be allowed to discredit an entire category that operates in harmony with the environment and in compliance with the rules " . We remind you that as already stated by the national president Massimo Buconi, the Italian Hunting Federation is preparing through its lawyers the act of filing a civil party against the author of this unspeakable act of poaching which, as well pointed out by the ACAA president, has nothing to do with the world of hunting and its practitioners.