Italian Wilderness Association writes an open letter to Lipu "Why are you opposed to hunting?"
The letter from AIW to Lipu: “I am a faithful member, perhaps among the oldest as a registration number, having the Card N. 7765/1971. That is, I joined only a few years after its establishment. Obviously I have always shared the LIPU activity in defense of birds and their habitats; However, I never shared his commitment against the hunting, especially when based not on concrete facts and motivations but on animal welfare positions, which often have nothing to do with the defense of birds and even less with that of their habitats. So, if you want, outside of its primary statutory purpose. For me, defending birds has always meant defending endangered species. That there was and there are those who practicing hunting in its legitimate forms and provided for by the laws, hunting species of birds not at risk of extinction for me has never meant a problem; if anything, we can discuss whether it is ethical or not to hunt birds like the Chaffinch, just to give an example, but certainly not because the species is endangered. In practice, always separating my love and interest for the protection of species at risk of extinction from what is a purely animalist position, therefore often inconsistent, given that many other problems threaten the avifauna and above all the disappearance of habitats, and among them the urbanization of the territories. This considering the fact that many hunters while practicing hunting are also worthy people concerned with environmental protection, so much so that they too can be considered conservationists.
Before joining the LIPU, however, I joined the American National Audubon Society, from which for almost fifty years I have received its periodical, letters and press releases (and today e-mails), admiring its strong commitment in defense of the birds of 'America and their habitats (there are hundreds and hundreds of their Sanctuary, Nature Center, Nature Preserve, that is natural environments bought dollar for dollar to preserve precious corners of nature. Well, the National Audubon Society has never been an anti-hunt! it's been a long time since its creator and founder (George Bird Grinnel) was a hunter!
But today the LIPU writes to me, as a member, telling me the lie or, better, leading me to believe it, that it is and that it was. Doing so, interpreting an initiative that if it made sense at the dawn of the association (we are talking about the end of the eighteenth century and the early nineteenth century) when it created the "Christmas Count" asking hunters to count birds instead of killing them (it was a tradition on Christmas Eve), then soon finished having it; a sense that in fact ceased later, when the hunting of birds was reduced to the species huntable by law. In practice, as is the case today in Italy, given that the hunting of small birds has become almost an endemic hunting of few places and few species and practiced by few hunters: a more ethical and animalistic issue than of substantial protection and, much less , conservation.
Among other things, in the aforementioned letter, among the results of the LIPU (only the LIPU?) The "defense of the Natura 2000 network" is mentioned, ignoring to tell the Members that in reality this network of "protected areas" (which is and not already democratically demarcated as they would have done in America!) the European Union has never requested a ban on hunting for them, which in fact is not applied, as indeed nothing of true conservation is foreseen in them.
Returning to the National Audubon Society and its position, I repeat, not at all anticaccia, it is appropriate to mention the fact that one of the most authoritative columnists of his magazine (the Audubon magazine) is a hunter, Ted Williams, a journalist who for that magazine has written numerous authoritative articles and actual reports on hunting and its importance in defense of natural spaces and for the control of animal species whose excessive growth is putting minor and rarer species of birds at risk.
This is actually true, even if the current leaders of the LIPU may not like it.
Murialdo, January 13, 2015
Frank Zunino
Secretary General of the Italian Wilderness Association