Stray Animals: Hon. Faenzi: "They are abandoned by tourists and animal rights activists do nothing".
It may seem strange, but in Lampedusa the only emergency we see today is that of stray dogs. They are the real refugees, or at least the only ones that everyone going to the island can immediately realize.
On the island there is a perceived emergency, namely the Tunisian refugees, and a real emergency, that is, the dogs abandoned by tourists. While there is no trace of the former, thanks to the splendid work carried out by the coast guard, the financial police and the carabinieri who every day intercept and accompany illegal immigrants from nearby Tunisia, to the reception facilities and then provide for their re-embarkation to safer places. , the latter are becoming a real health scourge and a public safety problem that no one takes charge of.
These four-legged refugees are, in fact, hundreds, "sometimes even a thousand have been counted", they say on the island, they live in packs, wander dangerously through the streets of the center, sleep on the beach in front of the port, and many of them they are also sick. A horrible phenomenon that has been going on for years and which nobody cares about: their owners first take them with them to the island, and at the end of their vacation they leave, leaving them there.
This is also due to the airlines or shipping companies which, paradoxically, decide at their discretion depending on the trip to accept animals on board or not. So if it was possible to board them on the way out, it may happen that it is not on the way back and many wicked owners thus decide to get rid of their pet.
Over the years, this has caused a stray dog emergency on the island that is most noticeable in summer. Lampedusa becomes their prison, especially in winter, without food or shelter. The absurd thing is that on the island the WWF runs a real hospital that houses a dozen sea turtles, but the attentive animal rights activists do not notice hundreds of abandoned dogs a few meters from them.
This case is illustrative, given that the much-criticized initiative taken in the Agriculture Commission in the Chamber of which I am a member which contemplates the killing of feral dogs in order to safeguard the flocks has caused a sensation and dismay on the part of animal and environmental associations.
Too bad, however, that these do nothing but exploit on their own the work carried out after months of consultations by the commission which provides for a regulation dedicated to the phenomenon of wild dogs and hybrids, and do not notice much more serious cases that exist in Italy than animals to be protected and cared for. We are not enemies of stray dogs, and this proves it, but only of those who cause damage to things and people.
Everyone does their job, therefore, and find solutions to the real problems of animals not to those that, prejudiced, they want to appear as such.
It is on this serious case of Lampedusa that I am denouncing and which I will deal with in the parliamentary committee, that animal rights activists should be indignant and intervene as soon as possible, instead of throwing mud on the Chamber's attempt to find solutions to the problem of wolf attacks on herds. , which cause serious economic damage to farmers.
Press Office on. Monica Faenzi (PDL)