The general opening of hunting has passed a few days ago, and even if it is premature to take stock, the results on the consistency and collection of sedentary game certainly do not appear comforting in many areas of Tuscany. To stem the problem, recipes that are now widely tested are constantly being proposed, with negative results (ready - hunting, forced entry of farmed fauna, etc.). On the other hand, few wonder about the profound changes or upheavals that have transformed the territory, the agricultural landscape and consequently the consistency of wildlife in a few years.
Profound changes on agronomic practices, on the essences and varieties cultivated, on the rhythms and methods of processing and exploitation of the soil and water resources. It is also necessary to reflect on how the incentives and destinations of economic resources in agriculture have often contributed to conditioning the presence and imbalance between populations of wildlife. With regard to all this, the upcoming reform of the Community Agricultural Policy (CAP) for the 2021-2027 cycle is presented as an extremely important event for hunting and wildlife and environmental management. It is precisely in these days that the new rules for the functioning of sector policies that will come into force after 2020 are being discussed and deepened. At the beginning of July, the European Parliament ratified the decision, in some respects unprecedented, to attribute responsibility of the matter to the Environment Commission jointly with the Agriculture Commission. The novelties seem to be those of wanting to further strengthen the environmental aspects of the reform of the new CAP. A precise signal arrives from Brussels to the Member States, which will have greater application skills than in the past, to strengthen the measures focused on the sustainability of agricultural practices, the fight against climate change, and the protection of biodiversity. There is no doubt that this shift of strategic axis on the new CAP could generate new European measures and extremely favorable funding for the protection of biodiversity and the ecosystem; these could produce enormous advantages for the conservation and development of wildlife with particular reference to sedentary fauna (galliformes and lagomorphs) and birdlife. National governments will have greater weight for the application of the new provisions of the CAP, and therefore it seems appropriate that the multiplicity of voices proposed on the subject, primarily farmers, but also environmental organizations, should be joined by the voice of the entire hunting world at national level. In particular, it would be of great environmental and fauna importance to encourage farmers applying for the CAP, combined with arable land:
Active management of the turf, to avoid the widespread abandonment of marginal arable land in Italy, with at least one mowing / shredding operation after 31 July (end of reproduction of most of the sedentary and migratory fauna);
Incentive for arable land intended for crops for fauna (without the use of chemical inputs);
Maintenance of the stubble of grass crops for at least 6 months after harvest;
Strengthening of measures for the protection of landscape elements useful for environmental diversity.
For titles combined with olive groves: prohibition of abandonment and obligation of minimum annual processing. For titles combined with meadows - pastures and pastures and for compensatory allowances for areas with natural disadvantages and for mountain areas: annual mowing / shredding of the weeds that invade these surfaces, obligation to recover grassland areas invaded by vegetation shrub (widespread situation in the main National Parks of the central-southern Apennines), as an element of protection of the Rock Partridge (Alectoris graeca), of the Gray Partridge (Perdix perdix) and of the Italic Hare (Lepus corsicanus) and in implementation of the respective national action plans drawn up by ISPRA. Encourage the superficial regulation of water and the maintenance of springs and springs, as well as minor roads and paths of service to agriculture and forests. Protection and incentive for cattle grazing in the mountains (mountain pasture, mountaineering, transhumance).
These and other operational indications that we could organically identify, without additional costs for the state and regions, would have a positive effect on fauna (birds and mammals), but also on reptiles and amphibians, in a context of exploitation and usable management of the environment. Hunters and the entire hunting world cannot therefore exempt themselves from this discussion. To generate an inversion of the trend on the presence of fauna in the territory and to recreate the environmental conditions favorable to it, it is necessary to become the main actors of a discussion made up of contents and resources for agriculture and the strategic territory for the future. Instead of witnessing, as often happens, useless and destructive polemics of survival within the hunting world, it is urgently necessary to make a qualitative leap; immediately put to work the best energies and skills to develop a specific project for a new dimension of wildlife management that could represent the new pact between the hunting, agricultural and environmental world from a more purely political and content point of view. The Confederation of Tuscan Hunters therefore deems it necessary and urgent to give life to a national table on the CAP and a specific working group to develop the necessary shared project lines to be presented in the appropriate institutional headquarters both national and European, raising awareness and also involving FACE (European Federation for Hunting and Conservation).