Hunting: pre-opening of the Hunting Season… and controversies; the advance of the opening of the hunting like every year it creates a clash between hunters and environmentalists.
The number of hunters in Italy is decreasing, but there passion resists. In the beautiful country, Europe's black jersey for infringements on the environment, from waste to the protection of fauna, the decision to open hunting at the beginning of September is being discussed, sooner than recommended by the EU.
In various regions of Italy, hunting begins at the beginning of September, and with it the controversies raised by animal welfare associations. It is actually one pre-opening with respect to the indications of Europe, which asks member countries to start shooting after the third Sunday in September. According to data from the Enpa, the National Animal Protection Agency, if in the 80s there were 2 million and 200 thousand Italians who hunted wild animals as a hobby, today there are no more than 650 thousand. A passion that seems to be in decline, but which still retains a hard core of admirers: very rare women, few young people, the hunter is above all a middle-aged man.
“The only acceptable hunt is the one that is closed forever. We are opposed both to the dramatic impact that the gunshots have on the fauna, and to an ethical discourse: killing for fun is unacceptable ”, says the ENPA.
“Each Region has its own hunting calendar, which varies according to the fauna of each territory and the stages of repopulation”, replies the National Free Hunting Association. In the Marche region, for example, hunting is held from 2 September to 10 February 2016: the blackbird can be killed and captured from September to December, the fox until 31 January next year. In Umbria, however, throughout the summer, from June to August, it was possible to hunt fallow deer, roe deer, red deer and mouflon, and it will also be possible to do so in October of this year, January and March 2016. Also the Lazio Region, where it is possible to hunt 13 species that according to the official scientific data of Ispra are considered to have an unfavorable conservation status, has granted a pre-opening of the hunting calendar at the beginning of September.
Italy, Europe's black jersey for infringements of the environment, from waste to the protection of fauna, has been accused several times for failing to comply with the 1979 Community directive for wild birds and 1985 for the protection of wild birds. 'habitat. Law 157 of '92, born as a law for the protection and protection of wildlife and to regularize the hunting calendar, only began to give its first results in 2010, thanks to an agreement between parliamentary groups, finally putting a point on the so-called season of the "wild hunt".
"Last autumn, however, Europe gave yet another warning to Italy - explains Enpa - by opening the Pilot investigation procedure and underlining the situation of illegality in which the country finds itself due to the hunting calendars that the Regions can establish. independently".
"Hunting should be prevented in the nesting places and during all stages of reproduction and dependence of the chicks, but this is not always the case and the pre-openings are devastating", says Annamaria Procacci, environmentalist of ENPA and parliamentarian of the Greens from 1987 to 2001, which at the end of the 80s also suffered an attack while together with other activists in the Brescia area they tried to remove the nets used by hunters to capture birds.
"Italy has 18 species in a poor state of conservation that can still be shot - concludes Procacci -, and it is still allowed in stalking to use live decoy birds coming from breeding as bait".
(27 August 2015)
Source: LaPresse (Twitter LaPresse)