Wilderness: Parco dei Monti Ernici, the controversy continues between the Italian Wilderness Association and the Orso & Friends association.
Here, we finally know who we are arguing with, no longer an acronym (Bear and Friends) but a person who represents them: it took almost ten press articles to get to that! The president Dr. Nicoletta Pupp tells us that she is of South Tyrolean origins. Then you should well know that in the South Tyrolean Parks they hunt regularly, and that they have been established with the full consent of the local communities. So that's what the Wilderness Association and ATC FR1 have been saying for years. Because no one is against the idea that the beauty and values of the Ernici Mountains come to enjoy protection, but it is one thing to protect them from roads, wind farms, ski lifts and various buildings; it is one thing to place oppressive constraints on local communities on the use of renewable natural resources, which as such (renewable) can very well be exploited, including hunting, as happens in all the parks of "your" South Tyrol. Why is this not also required for the Ernici Mountains? And why is it precisely the Wilderness Areas that are not liked, when they are designated with similar forms of protection, even if decided by the Municipalities and not by the regional authority?
The answer is very simple, in our opinion: because Orso and Friends and the Committee that supports the idea of a park want a park closed to hunting, not a park that limits itself to defending the territory and its landscape and biodiversity values and shared by the locals!
We read with satisfaction of the admiration that Dr. Pupp has for the idea of Wilderness. We are pleased, because at least on this point we find a meeting ground. And we would like to remind you that in the USA where these Areas were "invented", they are open to hunting, and they are, despite being hyper-constrained from an environmental and landscape point of view and despite being largely external to the Parks. National (which has been avoided to expand thanks to the fact that there are Wilderness Areas).
So why not adopt this policy here too? Why do you absolutely want a park closed to hunting? Perhaps because rather than the Wilderness (which contains ALL the values of nature) they love only animals, without realizing that an excess of love for wild boars, deer and roe deer is putting the Marsican bear and the chamois in the nearby park at risk. ; so they want a park that is shared, not so much by local inhabitants as by Roman and… South Tyrolean tourists.
She, the doctor, also praises the tourism of the Abruzzo Park, but she forgets to say that it is thanks to that tourism that the bear has come to move to the Ernici Mountains. Learn from the American Indians that to defend the Grizzly they close the food areas every year (to everyone!), While here the Ramno areas are used for paid tourism! What do you want to do like this also in the hoped-for Parco degli Ernici? Tourism and money and executive posts, other than the protection of habitats and landscapes!
Signed Franco Zunino - General Secretary of the AIW
Signed by Dr. Edmondo Vivoli - President of ATC FR1
(September 24, 2013)
Italian Wilderness Association