Wolf protection has been downgraded from "strictly protected" to "protected" following the Senate's approval under the European Delegation Act. The National Animal Protection Agency (NAP) calls the measure "unjust," calling it unjustified and intended only to please those farmers who don't systematically adopt predation prevention methods, without deriving any real benefit from them.
According to ENPA, "it is serious to note that this was an ideologically driven vote, which ignores the views of much of the scientific community , concerned about the status of the wolf in Italy: a still vulnerable population. It did not take into account the impact of hybridization, which affects nearly half of the wolves in our country; it did not take into account poaching, which affects over 10% of them each year." This decision "represents a further setback in wildlife conservation policy," says Annamaria Procacci, ENPA's wildlife director.
"We're targeting the most precious species, the one that plays a fundamental role in bioregulating environmental balances, the top predator of ungulates. None of this seems to matter. We're taking giant steps backward, attempting to erase important parts of that law, Law 157, passed 34 years ago and which marked a turning point in wildlife protection policy, by designating the wolf as a particularly protected species in Article 2."
(Unioneonline/vf)
