Perugia: the Sato Forestry Corps has banned wild boar hunting on snow-covered land also as part of the containment operations of the species; controversy broke out in the province.
Last week the State Forestry Corps of Perugia banned wild boar hunting in the provincial territory, even if aimed at containing the species, on the days when the ground is covered with snow but the decision is not liked in the Province and is immediately controversy. The Forestry has decided to implement the national legislation, Law 157/92 "Rules for the protection of homeothermic wildlife and for hunting", which in Article 21 (Prohibitions), in Paragraph 1, Letter m, states that the hunting is forbidden “on land completely or mostly covered with snow, except in the faunal area of the Alps, according to the provisions issued by the Regions concerned”.
On the contrary, e according to some provincial councilors “i selective withdrawals, as interventions aimed at minimizing damage to wildlife, cannot be considered hunting activities, hunting, similar to that practiced according to the times and methods established by the Hunting Calendars. Therefore, the aforementioned legislative provision cannot in any way apply to selective withdrawals ".
Therefore, according to this concept, “the presence of snow on the ground cannot be an impediment to carrying out containment interventions; on the contrary, it represents, if anything, a condition that favors these interventions, since with the presence of snowy mounds the game to be contained finds shelter and hiding places with more difficulty and therefore can be killed more easily ".
The reference example of the provincial councilors is that of Regional Council of Liguria which with a specific resolution authorized the wild boar hunting even on snow-covered terrain in order to make the containment measures of this species more effective.
With regard to the selective withdrawals that should have been carried out last week also in areas of the province of Perugia affected by heavy snow, the State Forestry Corps had arranged to sanction those equally those who had taken part in them despite, according to the Province, these interventions they had been "planned by the Province and ATC and absolutely necessary in a situation in which the Province is literally jumping through hoops to compensate farmers and small owners for the damage caused by opportunistic species, especially wild boars".
From the Province then the basic complaint: "We have an agricultural world on the verge of revolt due to the damage and the slowness in compensating them (slowness originating from the scarcity of available resources) and the State Forestry Corps allows itself the luxury of making impossible, in fact, the containment interventions in the localities that have seen the occurrence of snowfall, demonstrating a total disconnect with the needs and requirements of the community and, above all, interpreting the law in a completely arbitrary way ".
According to the provincial councilor who has risen over the incident, it is "a bad page that cost the Province and the hunters a waste of time and for the agricultural world it represented a missed opportunity to be satisfied in its sacrosanct requests".
Finally, the provincial councilor concluded, "The small direct farmers are already on a war footing and have every reason for it: for this reason, to prevent similar episodes from happening in the future, I will organize a meeting of the Commission in the presence of the Region in a suitable time. , ATC, State Forestry Corps and in the meantime I invite the organizations of small and medium-sized farmers to implement civil initiatives of protest and awareness. All together we can (and must !!) arrive at a solution and the affirmation of the correct dictation of the Law with tangible facts. I thank the Province, in particular the Chief Executive Officer and the sector managers ”.
22 January 2013