The hunter between federalism and environmental protection (2002)

In the course of three years, administrative sanctions related to agricultural, forestry and environmental offences have more than tripled: this increase is due to a substantial increase in such offences. The research shows that an increase in the repression and punishment of offences committed against the environment is a fundamental step to ensure the coexistence of the hunting phenomenon with a culture of respect and environmental protection. It is essential to tackle the hunting issue in depth. Therefore, we need to move on from simple fundamentalism and ideological thinking to a new approach based on consultation between all the social actors involved in environmental management: ecologists, farmers and hunters, and on reference to the management guidelines provided by environmental science, without prejudice or preconceptions. The number of hunters is slowly but steadily decreasing: this can be interpreted as a qualitative growth in hunting and the hunter. The evolutionary flow recorded for our country seems to find a similar trend in other European countries. Moreover, hunting legislation has been strongly influenced by European legislation, resulting in a substantial homogeneity of action policies in all countries.