From the ibex to the wild goose, up to the city pigeons. The changes to the hunting law approved in the Senate Committee are causing political and environmental conflict to explode. For associations and oppositions, this is a direct attack on Italian biodiversity, with the risk of drastically expanding huntable species, territories open to hunting activity and tools permitted to hunters.
The target is bill 1552, just approved by the Commission, which according to the Hunting Abolition League represents a real “shameful reform”.
Among the most contested innovations is the inclusion of the ibex among the huntable species. A symbolic animal of the Italian Alps, saved from extinction thanks to the historic royal reserve of the Savoy and then to the birth of the Gran Paradiso National Park. Today, environmentalists point out, around 15 thousand specimens live on the Italian side of the Alps.
The wild goose, now protected, would also appear in the text, while the wolf would be removed from the list of particularly protected species, paving the way for much weaker protection.
But that’s not all. According to the LAC, the reform would enormously expand the spaces and methods of hunting: from state forests to snow-covered lands, passing through mountain passes and even state maritime property, with the de facto reopening of so-called “beach hunting”. Aiming systems with residual light amplification would also be permitted, instruments prohibited by the Bern Convention on the Protection of Wildlife.
For the association, the result would be “unsustainable” hunting pressure on Italian ecosystems, already put to the test by the climate crisis, habitat fragmentation and land consumption.
The protest, meanwhile, also moved in front of the Senate and the Pantheon, where environmental and animal rights associations organized a press conference and a flash mob to ask for the withdrawal of the reform of law 157/1992. Among the protagonists of the mobilization is also the National Animal Protection Agency, which openly speaks of the “massacre” of the historic law on the protection of wild fauna.
This reform is not simply dismantling law 157: it is destroying it – declared Annamaria Procacci, Enpa wildlife manager and former parliamentarian. It is a challenge to Europe, to community directives, to the protection of common heritage and even to democratic principles.”
According to Enpa, the provision would further extend the hunting periods and introduce new killing possibilities also in areas frequented by citizens.
We are talking about a text that even opens up hunting on beaches and in areas frequented by citizens, calling into question the right to safety and health enshrined in Article 32 of the Constitution, added Procacci.
Also in the sights of the associations is the alleged failure to transpose the findings received from the European Commission, which would have reported possible violations of the Habitats and Birds directives.
WWF Italy also participated in the mobilization by talking about an event “of exceptional institutional gravityAccording to the association, the text was even worsened during the parliamentary process, despite European calls.
Among the most contested aspects, in addition to the expansion of huntable species, there would also be the ban on “hindering or slowing down” hunting activity, a formulation which according to the associations would risk stifling even peaceful dissent.
We are faced with a very serious fact: a law is being brought forward knowing that it presents profiles of unconstitutionality, incompatibility with European law, which increases the risks for public safety and health, says Dante Caserta, director of legal and institutional affairs of WWF Italy.
The stance of Andrea Zanoni of Green Europe is also very harsh, speaking openly of “legal and naturalistic opprobrium” and of a “return to barbarism”.
According to Zanoni, including the wild goose among the huntable species would be “madness”, especially since these are migratory populations that are already fragile and heavily affected by habitat loss. The risk, he denounces, is transforming the lagoon areas frequented by birdwatchers into places of indiscriminate killing.
The choice to include the pigeon among the huntable species also ends up in the crosshairs.
The conflict will now move to the Senate, where environmentalists and the opposition promise to fight against a reform that actually risks transforming Italian woods and countryside into “a wildlife desert”.
