The provincial councilor for hunting, Claudio Bellan, responds to the environmentalists on the reports of poaching in the Po delta and urges not to criminalize an entire category because of a few "haggard characters".
Below we report the note of the councilor for hunting of the Province of Rovigo, Claudio Bellan, on the reports of poaching and improper hunting practices in the Po delta. "The environmental world, for a long time and especially in the last period, denounces the use of prohibited vehicles and a situation of widespread irregularity of fixed hunting stalks, combined with inadequate control and repression. This is not the situation and clarity is required.
Most of the hunters who gravitate to the territory carry out their activity on a regular basis and it is precisely this subject that suffers the damage caused by the few who indulge in the use of banned calls or weapons. More than 1200 hunters registered in the ATC RO3 cannot be criminalized because of small characters with no hunting ethics and not very respectful of the particular environment in which they find themselves.
As for fixed stalking, the Province owns about 300 structures located in a precise way also as regards the boundaries of prohibited areas, taking into account the level of precision allowed by official maps. This especially taking into account that the specificity and precariousness of the structures imposes a margin of tolerance considering the conformation of the lagoon territory.
Nonetheless we have repeatedly reported, even recently, to the Judicial Authorities, clearly irregular and not remediable stalking, simultaneously launching a path with the municipalities concerned, to define a technical-administrative process that resolves the specificity of the hunting practice from stalking.
Furthermore, our delta is by no means a no-man's land where vigilance does not intervene. Ours is a vast and difficult to navigate territory, with wide views and situations that make it objectively complex to find those who behave illegally in the act. Our Police moves with cars and boats always guaranteeing the presence but it is not possible to guard every area.
The recent episode of poaching reported in the media, which took place outside the park area, entered into a situation of contemporaneity of various services, even delicate ones, which involved a presence on site only after a certain period of time, without the timeliness that would have been ensured in ordinary conditions.
Hearing or seeing alleged poachers, as a tedious daily denunciation of a certain part of the environmentalist world, it is misleading and does not correspond to reality, denoting a simplistic approach to the problem, when not a lack of knowledge of the complexity of the territory.
The faunal censuses regularly carried out do not report any alarming data as regards the consistency of migratory species in the lagoon areas and within the hunting companies, sometimes signaling the increase of the valuable ones.
This is a clear indicator that hunting in our Delta takes place in a controlled manner with a pressure completely compatible with the need to maintain an adequate balance.
Hoping for interventions as a "final solution" to counter a few characters who behave incorrectly, isolated from the vast majority of the same category to which they belong, it would be profoundly unfair, as if one wanted to close the motorway to prevent the mad rush of some reckless motorist ”.
Source: Rovigo24Ore.it