The environmental disaster that occurred in recent days in Valle Mandriole (known in the area as Canna Valley) with the death of many thousands of waterfowl due to the spread of the Botulinum C bacterium, is nothing more than the umpteenth demonstration of a widely announced environmental disaster and the reconfirmation of how important it is to manage the territory and the ecosystem with knowledge and competence. Until Valle della Canna was managed in synergy between hunters, fishermen and local authorities, the Valle della Canna was a real paradise on earth. Its very name "Valle della Canna" described a humid environment of rare beauty that housed a considerable amount of water birds and a heritage of biodiversity of rare beauty.
What remains today of Valle della Canna after it was removed from hunting due to the imposition of restrictions resulting from the parcomania and deprived of the wildlife management ensured over the centuries by passionate and competent people? The reed has almost completely disappeared due to the lack of oxygenation and the lack of water exchange, also the main cause of the poisoning by Botulinum C which caused the extermination of many thousands of water birds. The environmental disaster of Valle della Canna should teach us to distinguish the effects of prudent management, of the territory in general and of wetlands in particular, by hunters, fishermen and the non-fundamentalist component of the environmentalist world, light years away. from the mentality of those who believe that to protect the environment it is enough to ban hunting, fishing and anthropogenic activities historically carried out in our territory. Demagogy and animal-environmental ideology has created and continues to create irreparable damage to the ecosystem.
Of course, someone is more interested in creating money-eating carriages such as parks and limiting themselves to guaranteeing compensation to the members of the managing body of the protected area and to impose restrictions and prohibitions in the name of that animal-environmentalism that believes that protecting only means prohibiting and conserving it just means embalming the territory and putting it under a glass bell. Someone should understand that conservation and protection must be combined with the word "management" and that the protection of the ecosystem must be entrusted to competent people who have graduated from the school of life and have acquired that knowledge that is not only found in books but which it is acquired above all through centuries of experiences that are handed down from generation to generation. The animal-environmentalists in good faith (if there are any) take a bath of humility and learn from the umpteenth environmental disaster of Valle della Canna and go and see how the territories in general and the wetlands in particular by hunters are managed , fishermen and bearers of rural culture. They should read up on the effects of correct wildlife management and natural habitats. Where these environments are managed free of charge and without public funding by passionate and competent people, the image that can be seen continues to be that of real terrestrial paradises, also from the faunal as well as environmental point of view. Where these environments are entrusted to those who are pervaded by the animal-environmentalist mentality, often financed with large amounts of public resources, environmental disasters are repeated with systematic periodicity.
Is it possible that in our country we prefer to continue squandering enormous quantities of public resources to guarantee some seats for some trumpeted politician or some animal-environmentalist without other stable employment?
Is it possible that we do not want to treasure the experience and competence of those who guarantee, free of charge and without costs for the community, the maintenance and protection of the environment and the ecosystem?
We hope that the representatives of the institutions will soon come to their senses and return to entrust the management of the territory and the ecosystem to those who are environmentalists out of conviction and necessity and not out of fashion or convenience.
Environmentalism must not only be preached but must above all be practiced.
No one more than hunters, fishermen, bearers of rural culture can be defined environmentalists because these categories know perfectly well that the quality of the environment in which they live does not only depend on the future of their centuries-old activities but also their health and that of theirs. sons.
They live there on a daily basis in those territories and do not just go there once a year to take some pictures or to take us for a Sunday trip leaving their waste on the territory.
Sergio Berlato
National President of the Confederation of Italian Hunting Associations
National President of the Association for the Defense and Promotion of Rural Culture.