Yesterday morning the ritual of the pre-opening of hunting in Italy took place. Sixteen regions out of twenty have chosen to join the pre-opening of the hunt; each region in its own way.
In Italy, the pre-opening towards some wild species is possible thanks to a law of 1992, which grants an advance of two to three weeks for the general opening of hunting in Italy. Here are some of the diversity of the regions that joined the pre-opening of the hunt. Basilicata, for example, allows you to immediately shoot magpies, gray crows and turtle doves in order to allow wild boar hunting further ahead and thus close, with sessions three times a week, on 10 February.
The Sicily region, on the other hand, is offering hunters eleven more days before the official opening. The Marche and Piedmont regions allow outings with seven additional hunting days. For now, we do not shoot only in Abruzzo, Liguria, Trentino-Alto Adige and Valle d'Aosta.
The controversy is already high. This year there is no negative environmental surplus of 2017, when fires and droughts had stripped and dried up the woods of the Peninsula and in the regions where the League governs the activity of six hundred thousand registered hunters is sustained. However, the rumors against hunting moved in a timely manner.
The WWF has presented nine appeals to the regional courts against the pre-opening of the hunting season: "For several years there has been no such widespread violation by the Regions of the rules that protect the fauna and regulate the hunting activity. They decide to bring forward the start of the hunting season to the first days of September, compared to what is established by law, or the third Sunday of September, and thus prolonging the already long hunting season they authorize many more hunting days, with thousands and thousands of animals killed ".
They certainly weren't watching the Greens talk openly about "legalized acts of cruelty". So writes Luana Zanella, coordinator of the executive of the Greens: "The time has come to review a legislation that appears evidently inadequate to protect wild species, we are relaunching the bill for the abolition of hunting".
More moderate Italian Bird Protection League (Lipu, in fact) which mentions towards the pre-opening: “it will damage the wild turtledove, a globally threatened species, for which the European Union is asking for a total safeguard”. And it will jeopardize "even the last stages of nesting for other species". Lipu attacks the regions "bent on hunting drives" even against the opinions of the Ministry of the Environment. Nor has it escaped9 that the region of Puglia, "completely outlawed", has not yet given itself a hunting calendar, mandatory since June 15, or a wildlife plan.
There are six other huntable species now considered "globally threatened". They are the lapwing, the pochard, the rock partridge, the redwing, the lark and, where present, the ptarmigan.
The National Animal Protection Body, pushing on the dualism of government, appeals to the Five Stars: "Be the spokesperson for animal rights and the restoration of legality". Enpa says: "The abuses and forcing of the Regions, which grant more and more to hunters trampling on science, rulings of the Council of State, the Constitutional Court, the Tar, are particularly evident".
Pre-opening can be granted only under strict conditions: the opinion of Ispra, the scientific institute of reference, and the presence of an adequate regional hunting plan. Lazio's plan, which started today and postponed to 10 February, dates back to 1998.