Poaching in the Aquila area. The two poachers blocked and reported by the agents of the State Forestry Corps on 12 October 2013 were sentenced by the Court of L'Aquila while they were intent on to hunt poaching within the protected area of the Sirente-Velino Regional Natural Park.
The two poachers, 32 and 35 years old both resident in Lazio, were sentenced to 3 months of arrest and a fine of 600 euros each, with definitive confiscation of the weaponry used, for having illegally carried out hunting activities in a protected area with the aid of 12 gauge shotguns and two English Setter dogs.
The judge did not consider applying the rules recently introduced in the Criminal Code which provide for the non-punishment of particularly tenuous facts, as the crime was committed in one of the most remote areas of the Sirente-Velino Regional Natural Park (protected also at as part of the European Natura 2000 network), characterized by intact high-altitude habitats that host the most important populations of the rock partridge, an ornithic species highly threatened and protected at European level by the Habitat Directive 92/43 / EEC.
The judge did not even accept the defense thesis which stated the lack of responsibility of the two defendants as the boundary of the protected area is not clearly marked on the ground: in fact, according to the jurisprudence of the Court of Cassation, the hunters have in this regard a particular obligation of information, since the boundaries of the protected areas are published in Official Gazettes and Bulletins with all the relative technical and topographical indications.
The staff of the Territorial Office for Biodiversity of L'Aquila of the State Forestry Corps, which manages the "Acquazzese" Regional State Forest on behalf of the Abruzzo Region, had already surprised other poachers in the same area and in the same period, which coincides with the opening of the rock partridge hunt, which is allowed to be killed in very limited areas and with very strict regulations.
The main threat to the conservation of the rock partridge is considered precisely the hunting pressure. On the basis of the 2013-2014 Hunting Calendar of the Abruzzo Region and that of the Provincial Administration of L'Aquila, the hunting of this species is allowed only in particular ways and in very limited areas, the closest of which is located about 3 kilometers away. Southwest of the offense point.
(March 21, 2016)
Source: AbruzzoLive
You May Also Like ..
