Page 89 - Supplemento 2-2016 (ENG)

Tackling Environmental Crime throUgh standardized Methodologies

Fulvio Mamone Capria
President, LIPU

Thank you, thank you Maurizio and special thanks to General Del Sette
and to Ingegnere Patrone for inviting me to this conference. My special grati-
tude goes to the Carabinieri and State Forestry Department operational sup-
port units who, in this very moment, are working side by side with our volun-
teers to protect in the area of the Messina strait the southbound migration of
the European honey buzzard (pern). They are also working in Ischia island to
contrast with our friends from WWF and other associations, poaching which is
still widely spread because within the tens of thousands of birds that are cur-
rently migrating, some of them have already reached their nesting sites in
North Europe. While the others, if they have managed to go beyond central
Africa, the Sahel zone, the desert and the African coasts and are approaching
the Mediterranean Sea, are running serious risks. They will be soon approa-
ching Italy which is an important crossroads for birds migration. What these
birds see is a devastated landscape, since birds – apart from poaching which I
will discuss briefly later – are witnessing what we are causing to the European
richest Country in terms of biodiversity: the use of land for ruthless overbuil-
ding, mentioned earlier, in the quantity of seven square metres per second is
drastically transforming important areas of our country.

Our coasts are no longer site in which birds, mainly the small waders, such
the Kentish Plover, can find a site for nesting as these habitats are destroyed
and transformed. In agriculture, where we excel in the world food farming pro-
duction, a large quantity of pesticides and herbicides are widely used, someti-
mes even breaking the law. This obviously takes place with the satisfaction of
some entrepreneurs, who, in the last twenty years, have caused the reduction of
what are usually called “common birds”: the presence of the swallow, the
Italian sparrow and of the lark has decreased between 40% and 50%. The
result is that we are running the risk of losing these animals; we are risking the
loss of the Italian leadership in the large wealth of nature and biodiversity.

It is important to discuss about this in this very location where the
Carabinieri Corps are embarking in the merger (with the State Forestry

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