Closing of the hunting season
La LAV (Anti-Vivisection League) intervened in the last few hours to take stock of the closing of the 2023-2024 hunting season. Here is what was reported by the animal rights association: “Like every year, the death toll from shotguns, rifles and bows is impossible, but estimated at tens of millions of animals killed to satisfy the bloody pastime of a small minority of citizens. It is impossible to know the number of animals actually killed because the reporting is left in the hands of the hunters themselves and this creates a clear conflict of interest which empties the data reported on the hunting cards of any value. But if the hunting of wild animals is temporarily suspended until the third Sunday of September, when the next hunting season opens, what is by no means over is the political assault on even the minimal rules established to protect wild animals.".
The role of ministries
The note continues: “The pro-hunting group, widely represented in the parliamentary majority but also in the opposition, continues its work of demolishing the key principles of the national framework law on the protection of wildlife, aided in this by a Minister of Agriculture at the full service of the associations hunting and agricultural sectors and by an Environment Minister who has been in a constant state of vigilant coma since he took office. Due to the execution of wildlife control plans drawn up by the Regions, hunter activity is constant all year round. Foxes, crows, magpies and jays are killed by the tens of thousands, while no better fate awaits wild boars, persecuted under the pretext of combating the spread of African Swine Fever. In 2024, 612.000 of them will fall to the blows of hunters, euphemistically renamed " bioregulators" by the Extraordinary Commissioner to the PSA. The situation is dramatic, we now find ourselves in a permanent hunting regime which will only worsen further following the largest attack ever launched against wild fauna, which began with the approval of the infamous wild hunting amendment which now allows the entry of hunters also in parks and cities".
LAV's response
LAV then added: “The conference organized by LAV for 22 February in the Hall of Parliamentary Acts of the Senate, in which we will present the research "The protection of animals in the new article 9 of the Constitution", represents our response: we will ask for the intervention of the Quirinale because the legislator is reminded of full respect for article 9 of the Constitution, therefore for animals and their environment".