At the Cargo City of Malpensa airport the soldiers of the CITES Operational Section of the Malpensa Group of the Guardia di Finanza, together with the officials of the Customs and Monopolies Agency, blocked a shipment coming from Bosnia Herzegovina declared as “hunting trophy”.
During the inspection it emerged that the package contained a fur coat Ursus arctos (brown bear), duly indicated in the documentation, but also an undeclared skull of the same species and without the authorizations required by CITES regulations.
The brown bear is in fact among the specimens protected by the Washington Convention on international trade in threatened species and by Regulation (EC) no. 338/97, which regulate the import and export of wild flora and fauna.
In the absence of the necessary certificates, an administrative complaint was initiated against the importer and the skull was seized, with the aim of subsequent confiscation in accordance with the provisions of law no. 689/1981.
A “trophy” was said, but behind it there is often an opaque supply chain made up of culling, exploitation and unscrupulous trade. The illegal trafficking of wildlife is among the most profitable criminal businesses in the world, it feeds international networks and takes away already fragile biodiversity from ecosystems, a sign of a sick relationship with animals, reduced to objects to be exhibited or collected.
Every skull, skin or tusk seized tells a story of violence that impoverishes nature and distances us from the very idea of coexistence with other species.
Source: GdF
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