On Friday 23 October, from 5pm to 7pm, the Auditorium of the Venice Congress Center in Mestre hosts the first Wolf Trial, a unique legal and cultural event – which can be followed in live streaming at this link – signed by the Animal Rights Commission of the Venetian Criminal Chamber, led by Francesca Lacchin, in close collaboration with the WHALE Course of the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and the LNDC Animal Protection association.
The large carnivore, historically persecuted by fairy tales, folklore and ideological prejudices and in recent years targeted by multiple municipal and regional administrations, finds itself called to answer directly for the accusation made pursuant to article 544 bis of the Criminal Code, contested for the killing of a calf belonging to a local farmer. In the dock the animal will physically voice itself through the theatrical interpretation of the actor Moreno Corà, originally from the Asiago Plateau, while a real judicial court made up of magistrates and lawyers in robes will reconstruct every step of the trial.
The defense team and the testimonies of the simulated trial
The structure of the mock trial follows in detail the celebration of a real criminal trial under the presidency of Judge Raffaele Incardona of the Court of Venice. To support the accusation against the Canis lupus include the public prosecutors Sergio Dini and Martina Varagnolo of the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Padua, while the animal’s defense is entrusted to the lawyers Monica Gazzola and Michele Pezone, responsible for animal rights for LNDC.
During the trial, witnesses will appear, played by lawyers Andrea Galli in the role of the farmer robbed of his head of cattle and Giorgio Bortolotto in the role of the hunter who opened fire on the predator without managing to kill it. Zoologist and wolf expert Mia Canestrini will make a fundamental scientific and ethological contribution to the defense, tasked with clarifying the instinctive nature and real behavior of the species.
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The cultural and legal response to constant hunting and punitive reforms
The initiative takes on a crucial symbolic value within the current historical context, strongly marked by the downgrading of the protection status of the wolf at a European level and by the examination of the new reform of the hunting law being examined by the Italian Parliament. According to the indications provided by the ISPRA protocol, between 2017 and 2024 only 19 non-fatal attacks on human beings attributable to 7 specific individuals were documented in Italy, of which 11 attributable to a single specimen in Vasto in summer 2023.
The judicial debate thus aims to highlight the need to adopt correct prevention measures on farms rather than giving in to propaganda narratives or dramatic sanctioning measures such as authorized sampling and culling, reaffirming the importance of guaranteeing peaceful coexistence and the protection of biodiversity on the national territory. A fundamental message which, we hope, will also reach the ears of those who govern us and who too often unfairly point the finger at animals that simply follow their nature.
