Hunting season: regulations, disputes and wildlife management

The hunting season opens, amidst controversy. Because, as laid down in Law 157/92, the hunting calendar must be between the third Sunday in September and 31 January of the following year. In reality, the regions can bring forward the opening of operations to 1 September, but for specific species and, if they do, they must also bring forward the closing date proportionally.

The mere looming on the horizon of the opening of the hunting season has already provoked protests in recent weeks from various environmental and animal rights associations, which describe the measures currently before the Senate to amend the hunting law as profound deregulation.

'Some important changes were already introduced with the last financial law,' explains Federcaccia president Massimo Buconi, 'which provided for some flexibilities in addition to the extraordinary wildlife management plan. The concept was introduced whereby wildlife control is no longer subject to hunting regulations but is an activity carried out in the public interest'.

But in the environmental and animal rights world there are many who see it in a completely different way in the conviction that the new regulations are outlining a sort of dangerous 'free-for-all' in hunting. 'Some people see too many American films,' Buconi adds, 'In Italy hunting continues to be - rightly - strongly regulated. We continue to have the most stringent regulations on the subject in Europe. Hunting requires a medical examination by the family doctor followed by one by a forensic doctor, an ASL or the military corps. Visits that must be carried out periodically. It is then necessary to pass a hunting exam and to have the suitability of a shooting range for the use and handling of weapons and also to submit an application to the Questura, which verifies all the legal requirements, for the issue of a firearms licence. Without forgetting that hunting can only be done in designated territories, it is in fact precluded in protected areas: parks, oases and restocking areas. Then there are the Natura 2000 network sites and SPAs, special protection zones, where there is no ban but restrictions. And then there are the private hunting institutes where the concessionaire's authorisation is required to operate. And these are areas that in many cases coincide with farms. All this does not change one iota. In short, we are not in the USA where one goes to the armoury with one's identity card and can buy a rifle'.

The point is that since Law 157 of '92 was passed, conditions have changed profoundly. The 1.4-1.5 million hunters in Italy are now less than 500,000, while at the same time the number of wildlife has grown disproportionately. 'It is also for this reason that the title of the hunting law has been changed,' Buconi adds. 'Whereas in 1992 the law spoke of a law "for the management and protection of wild species", today it only speaks of "management". Moreover, the law of the 1990s divided hunting areas by species, so those who hunted sedentary fauna such as pheasant or hare could not hunt migratory species such as thrush or blackbird and vice versa. Now there is a tendency to remove these limitations also because in the face of emergencies such as the proliferation of wild boars, the primary vector of African swine fever, hunters are often not enough to carry out effective management'.