La Constitutional Court, yesterday, announced the sentence with which he replied to the question of TAR of Tuscany that, examining the appeal on Art. 37 of Regional Law 3/94 of some animal welfare associations, has raised doubts about the constitutionality of some paragraphs of the aforementioned Art 37, the one that regulates the interventions of wildlife control. The petitioner animal associations have criticized the Region, in particular, for the lack of implementation of the so-called ecological damage mitigation mechanisms, the involvement of hunters authorized pursuant to Article 37 and of the security guards in the containment, the equality of the members of the boar hunting teams and of the selectors to the hunters authorized pursuant to Article 37 and last but not least the inclusion between the means of containment of the hunted.
The Constitutional Court rejected the requests of the TAR and of the animal-environmentalists, as regards the participation in the control of hunters and security guards, while he overturned the equation of the harnesses and selectors to those qualified for courses pursuant to Article 37, without entering into the merits of the verification of the functioning of ecological prevention methods and the use of the hunted in containment.
So, translated in layman's terms, the sentence gives rise to 3 results:
- A positive affirmation of the principle that hunters, when properly trained, as is the case with the course pursuant to Article 37, can participate in wildlife control operations as well as security guards. This despite the fact that they are not included among the subjects who are responsible for control pursuant to law 157/92. So a sentence that will protect us from further appeals.
- That selectors and belt makers will no longer have article 37 automatically, but to participate in the control interventions they must be in possession of the qualification certificate.
- That it will be necessary to wait for the ruling of the TAR to find out if the containment hunts can continue and if the Region has worked best in the definition and application of the ecological methods preparatory to the actual containment (Arci Caccia).