Hunting and Dogs: training hounds in protected areas, this is the proposal of the Northern League senator Giacomo Stucchi.
Protected areas such as training centers for dogs from hunting. The proposal comes from the Northern League senator Giacomo Stucchi who launched the idea of "hunting federalism", entrusting the Regions with the competence to decide if and which areas of regional and national parks to allocate to the training of bloodhounds. A proposal that the Copasir president has re-presented also in this legislature, after a couple of failed attempts previously.
The purpose of the proposal is to "contribute to the revival of the economy in protected areas, favoring the carrying out of activities related to the training of hunting dogs, also through the spread of dog tourism", explains the parliamentarian from Bergamo del Carroccio, member of the 'parliamentary intergroup "Friends of Shooting, Hunting and Fishing". It is not a question of hunting, Stucchi hastens to specify in the report that accompanies the articles of the proposal. However, "it is allowed - as stated in article 2 of the proposal - the killing, during the canine competitions, of the farmed fauna, previously introduced which, for all legal purposes, is not considered wild". The activity carried out in the fields for dog training “In no case is it a form of hunting exercise”.
Within the protected areas that fall within the territory of the park-authorities, the Regions, according to the League's proposal, "can establish breeding areas for wildlife of canine-hunting interest to be placed in the hunting territories present in the Regions themselves" . And the regional administrations can also entrust these same areas "to cooperatives of young people residing in the municipalities concerned or to single or associated agricultural entrepreneurs".
Areas that must have a minimum extension of 2 thousand hectares. In addition, an area of up to 10% of the same areas "can be reserved for the construction of public and private centers for the reproduction of wildlife of canine-hunting interest". And the Municipalities whose territory falls, in whole or in part, within the park-entities "may establish specific areas of a minimum extension of 2 thousand hectares to be used exclusively for the training of hunting dogs owned by those who remain in the same Municipalities also for tourism purposes ".
"The recent evolutions of European environmental legislation - argues Stucchi - have contributed to changing the concept of conservation of environmental resources, no longer seen as a mere defense of the existing through the imposition of bans, but, more correctly, understood in the sense to seek integration between the measures for the protection of habitats and animal and plant species and the economic and social characteristics of the areas concerned ".
An approach that according to the parliamentarian of the Carroccio "is certainly to be judged positively because it overcomes some traditional rigidities, typical of certain forms of environmentalism, more careful to identify what should be forbidden than to seek a balance between natural resources and activities human, the two components that over time have contributed to determine the environment as we see it today ". This, Stucchi points out, does not mean that agricultural and hunting activities do not have to respect the rules for the protection of ecosystems, but the environment "cannot be considered a set of original natural and uncontaminated resources, but rather the result of the centuries-old interaction between human activities and the natural context in which those same activities took place ".
"In this spirit, among the activities that can easily not only be considered consistent with the protection needs of protected areas, but also represent interesting opportunities for economic diversification and therefore for the production of income for those same areas, there are certainly the related canine activities to the training of hunting dogs ”, concludes the Northern League senator.
(14 July 2015)
Source: Adnkronos