Poaching and surroundings: Siena, investigations on illegal hunting trips taken within the nature reserves concluded, twenty people under investigation including the president of Federparchi.
The investigations into the killing - "unauthorized" says the prosecutor - of ungulates in three different nature reserves in the province of Siena concluded. The winds under investigation, including Giampiero Sammuri, at the time of the facts, director of the wildlife resources and nature reserves of the Sienese area and today president of Federparchi, were notified to the former and current commander of the Provincial Police and to the owners of the land. these days the decree with which the deputy prosecutor of the Republic Nicola Marini warns them of the end of the investigations concerning events that occurred up to 2010. Most of them are accused of abuse of office. All the suspects from the beginning of the investigation, which for a long time engaged the men of the Finance and Forestry of the respective judicial police teams of the Public Prosecutor's Office, through their lawyers had countered the accusations by producing a substantial amount of documents. The investigation covered a long period of time (from 2004 to 2010) and verified the killing of ungulates in the regional nature reserves of Lucciola Bella, Crete dell'Orcia and Formone, Alta Val di Merse and Basso Merse. For the Public Prosecutor's Office they had been done without requesting in advance either the competent regional or national bodies the required mandatory opinion for the regional nature reserves.
Indeed - again according to the accusation - specific technical reports had been drawn up in which the need to carry out the killing was highlighted to reduce damage to crops. Yet underlines the prosecutor Marini no one had ever previously carried out any specific monitoring and census of the ungulate population, so much so that there are no “specific situations or studies such as to highlight ecological imbalances of wildlife within these natural reserves”.
And in the request for indictment the finger is also pointed at the way of carrying out the killing that "gave the suspects an unfair financial advantage". In fact, according to the PM they were made with the method, not allowed, of the "hunted". In practice, vehicles were used, sometimes owned by the provincial administration, from which animals were shot. The owners of the land, again according to PM Nicola Marini, were invited to participate without having, among other things, attended specific training courses and in the end they received part of the animals killed as compensation for damage to crops despite the fact that the managers knew that the owners themselves were fully compensated by the Province. Accusations that the suspects have always contested from the beginning. Now the word passes to the judge of the preliminary hearing.
November 14, 2013
Source: LaNazione-Siena