In a single day it gathered almost 40,000 signatures and is still growing. It is the Change.org petition “Stop tortura piccoli uccelli per farne richiami vivi”.
On 25 February, the European Union launched an infringement procedure against Italy over the use of live decoys in hunting. The EU's action marks another point in favour of a battle that environmental and animal welfare organisations have been waging for years to put a stop to this cruel practice.
Live decoys are small migratory birds that, after the exhausting efforts of nesting, undertake the great journey of migration from northern to southern Europe and arrive in Italy. Here they are caught in nets and condemned to a life of torture and cruelty: darkness, captivity, abuse. Imprisoned, bound, sometimes blinded and mutilated. They are then taken outside when the hunting season opens and used as live decoys — that is, as a lure to attract their own kind with their song — their cries for help — so that hunters can shoot them down.
I have worked hard on many occasions to curb the systematic violation, particularly by certain regions, of regulations protecting wildlife, with illegitimate derogations that have often been sanctioned and annulled by the courts. I have been attacked and even threatened on numerous occasions by fringes of the hunting world precisely because of my commitment to protecting wildlife. This intensified after I succeeded in passing the ministerial decree of 17 October 2007, which, among other things, banned hunting in areas of particular environmental interest, finally giving effect to the European Directive.
Personally, I have always been opposed to hunting, but here, now, in this case, it is at the very least a matter of prohibiting one of the most cruel practices — one that is by now condemned even by the more thoughtful elements within the hunting world itself.
The time has come to close this ugly chapter of Italian history once and for all. Those who sign the online petition on Change.org are asking the chairmen of the Senate's Industry and Environment committees — also in their capacity as rapporteurs for the so-called competitiveness decree of 24 June 2014 — to commit to eliminating the practice of live decoys.