Hunting is an activity that requires a very close contact with nature, or rather, requires a visceral symbiosis with the rhythms and natural phenomena. Hunting cannot in fact ignore the natural environment and the resources of a fauna heritage that we must all commit ourselves to respect and that hunting, living it actively, teaches us to protect and defend. Hunting today is no longer indiscriminate, it is no longer a food requirement, but passion and sport. In primitive populations, hunting served to improve and vary the diet, but it also represented a moment of social collaboration even between different groups, an opportunity to build language, to establish the roles and hierarchies that will then be transferred within the clan. . However, hunting is a dynamic activity that changes mentality and presuppositions based on the culture in which it developed and in which it is practiced. The most recent anthropological and historical studies on hunting offer us a lucid interpretation of the two opposing positions that still divide the hunting universe: one of a Roman-Judeo-Christian matrix that founds cities, cultivates the land, and searches, even with weapons , new markets.
The other, Nordic-pagan, who wanders in his element, the forest, in search of new hunting territories and who sometimes settles there devoting himself to crops of mere survival.
They are two attitudes compared: on the one hand, hedonism and dissipation, but also the claim to put order in the forest, to transform it into a garden populated by domestic animals and those opportunistic human species that live without producing appreciable damage around the field cultivated; on the other hand, sacredness and respect for the forest, its magic and its inhabitants, but also rational exploitation of the productive potential of wildlife.
<!–
->
But what does it mean to be hunters today, at the beginning of the third millennium? If on the one hand we speak of social aggregation, on the other we can speak of awareness of the territory. In fact, what changed the hunting world during the twentieth century can be traced back to three phenomena: rural exodus, industrialization and urbanization. Hunting and territory could not help but mark the pace in the face of this trend until, a century later, thanks to the approval of the framework law that regulates hunting activities (157/92), the hunter thanks to Atc and Ca é tied to its territory and therefore invited to protect and improve it. Nature needs hunting and the art of hunting cannot exist without a management agreed with the agricultural world and responsible for the environment to be respected. But before reaching this goal it is important to share the fact that Italy is not a mummified territory but an animated territory and that the hunter should not limit himself to observing the territory as a hiker could do, but must be able to have the freedom to act. in respect and in the perspective of protection. The hunter becomes the first true environmentalist in today's society. Let us think of the damage caused by environmental fundamentalism, which has banned hunting in protected areas for years, causing, according to the latest estimates reported by Sergio Marini, representative of the requests of breeders and farmers, about 70 million euros in damage every year, underlining that to date, the reimbursement reaches on average 30/40 percent of the total reported. President Vincenzo Pepe during the broadcast “Uno Mattina” reiterated the importance of the selection within the protected areas for problematic species such as wild boars that threaten other species and disfigure the environmental heritage. “If you don't act, you go against the conservation principles of a natural park”. “The problem, says Professor Pepe, is that censuses in many protected areas are not even carried out because in the common imagination the environmentalism of constraints and the a priori no to hunting resists. When animals in excess alter the ecosystem, action must be taken. The no to hunting produces further damage to the ecosystem ”. Hunting is an important tool for monitoring and maintaining balance between species. Not only! Abroad hunting is also an alternative to agriculture to attribute an economic value to the territory. In Scotland, for example, 'hunting' is included in the national budget. Another example of development aid represented by hunting are the Eastern countries where, in the face of a substantial investment of money destined for the arrangement of the forest stations reduced to ruins and the guarantee of jobs, as well as the creation of an induced derived from hunting, local governments have managed the hunting activity for a limited number of years with the imperative of observing the calendars, for times and local species. It becomes necessary to start looking at hunting activities from a European-type perspective in which the right value is re-attributed according to the laws issued by the European Commission.
Source: Op Opinion.it