While Europe asks for more protection of biodiversity, in Italy a real massacre is authorized. According to the provisions of the Liguria and Lombardy regions, there will be over 176,000 protected birds, including Fingueli and Storni, symbols of migration and wild beauty, to end up in the viewfinder of the rifles for a hunting in derogation (which has the bitter taste of legalized barbarism).
In Liguria, with resolution no. 335 of 10 July 2025, the green light is given to the reduction of 25,984 finches and 11,058 Stornments. In Lombardy, the blow is even harder: 97,637 Fringuelli and 41,552 Stornments will be sacrificed on the altar of the hunting tradition, as established by resolution no. 4714 of 14 July 2025.
Behind the patina of bureaucracy and grotesque motivations – from the fight against the “depopulation of the internal areas” up to the alleged “environmental improvement” deriving from the “mowing of the grass” around the hunting huts – the truth is hidden: an electoral maneuver disguised as a fauna management, which once again gives in to the pressure of the hunting lobbies.
The pretext of “traditions” and the total contempt of European laws
Environmental and animal rights associations – including Enpa, Lac, Lav, Legambiente, Lipu, WWF and others – have launched an urgent appeal to the Minister of the Environment Pichetto Fratin: immediately stop this legalized carnage. The derogations granted violated European directives and are based on justifications without legal, scientific and moral foundation.
It is not the first time that Italy is stained with violations against wildlife: the European Court of Justice has already condemned our country for the illegitimate use of the derogations from the bird directive. Yet the regions insist on folding the regulations to the logic of the rifle, with Lombardy that even comes to mention a Finnish case completely out of context (which, moreover, ended with the sentence of Finland).
Who earns? Only those who shoot
To pay the consequences will be the small migratory birds, already decimated by degraded habitats and climatic crisis. Fringuelli and Storni are not “targets”, but vital rings of the ecosystem. Yet, in the name of an increasingly fine hunting in itself, these animals will be eliminated as if they were waste, with the illusion that this can “help the local economy” so that the hunters “attend bars and restaurants”.
An idea of development to say the least medieval, which forgets how sustainable tourism, hiking and uncontaminated nature are true rebirth engines for internal areas. Don’t shoot them.
The associations ask for urgent intervention to stop this madness. If it does not act immediately, not only will we attend an announced massacre, but we will also risk yet another European condemnation. And above all we will lose, once again, the opportunity to show us a country capable of defending one’s biodiversity.
Minister Pichetto Fratin, the decision is his: to stop the hunting in derogation, before it is too late.
Sources: Liguria Region / Lombardy Region / Lipu
