«The policies for protecting the urchin are fundamental, and the majority of fishermen have understood this». This was stated yesterday evening in Santa Teresa Gallura, where the Councilor for the Environment, Marco Porcu, was present for the inauguration of the headquarters of the Marine Protected Area and for a conference. A remote response to the declarations of a few hours earlier by the regional councilor for Agriculture, Valeria Satta who, at the end of the meeting with the Fisheries Committee, had declared that she was « favorably convinced that urchin fishing can be done all year round ».
«If tomorrow the resource runs out, goodbye!», continued the Councilor for the Environment in Santa Teresa: «Yes, we can carry out repopulation activities, but how long will it take us to build that ecosystem? Are we sure that we can reconstitute that ecosystem that we will have lost? Probably not! Therefore - continued the councilor - talking about urchin fishing without limitations during the year is dangerous, but it is also dangerous for the economic operators themselves because it means that within a fairly short period of time those operators will be forced to change their economic activity, which is what a protection law aims to safeguard".
Councilor Porcu's position is therefore different from that of her colleague from Agriculture Satta, who added: «Thanks to an amendment by the Regional Council this year there was the possibility, for a season, to reopen, but now inevitably we will return to old legislation. In the uncertainty of the real existence of a need to safeguard the marine eco-system, in the face of the numerous difficulties that our fishermen have to deal with on a daily basis, I express my opinion in their favor, seeking, this time, a definitive solution. I will therefore propose, shortly, an amendment that allows the reopening of urchin fishing possibly indefinitely."
