For weeks a city street was transformed into the unexpected scene of a clash between man and nature. The story involved an example of a gray crow that settled on a large lime tree in Via Damiani in Pordenone to nest. The animal, busy protecting its young near the nest, was responsible for continuous low-flying and threatening dives towards passers-by, in some cases causing wounds and lacerations to the head of an elderly woman living on its terrace.
To counteract this, the mayor Alessandro Basso first arranged unsuccessful capture attempts and finally signed an ordinance for the selective euthanasia sampling, i.e. the killing of the bird. A decidedly hasty and unfounded solution given that it was not a “dangerous” specimen, but its actions simply responded to a natural instinct to protect its offspring, a temporary dynamic destined to vanish with the autonomy of the young.
Various acronyms including LAV and OIPA attacked the extreme measure, until the decisive intervention of the LNDC Animal Protection, which challenged the act requesting its urgent suspension before the administrative judges to avoid the death sentence of the parent and the consequent end of the little ones.
The TAR ruling and the position of animal rights activists
And now finally the good news. After the temporary suspension of the ordinance, the Regional Administrative Court of Friuli-Venezia Giulia definitively accepted the appeal presented by the lawyers Michele Pezone and Herbert Simone, canceling the ordinance of the Municipality of Pordenone. The judges found a municipal investigation to be lacking: in fact, there was no demonstration of the impossibility of applying non-lethal measures, the acquisition of the fundamental opinion of ISPRA and a real evaluation of the consequences that the elimination of the adult would have caused to the young in the nursery. The killing of a wild animal must in fact constitute the last and residual ratio.
Regarding the sentence, the president of the association Piera Rosati expressed great satisfaction by declaring:
The TAR’s decision shows that we were right to oppose a measure as extreme as it was unjustified. From the beginning we have maintained that the protection of public safety must be guaranteed without needlessly sacrificing the life of an animal that was simply carrying out a natural behavior: protecting its young. This ruling reaffirms a fundamental principle of legal civilization and respect for wildlife.
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