As the Sulmona Public Prosecutor’s Office continues to investigate the poisonings that, in April, killed 21 wolves, and other wildlife, inside and outside the boundaries of the Abruzzo, Lazio and Molise Park hereafter, PNALM), Salviamo L’Orso and Io non ho paura del lupo have co-signed a press release denouncing the statements made by some alleged, and self-proclaimed, representatives of the livestock breeding world.
Specifically, with regard to the recent unfounded statements spread publicly through social channels and web platforms by Mr. Dino Rossi, and some individuals related to the “Ruralpini” movement – regarding the alleged receipt of AGEA contributions by PNALM for pasture rental – it is all too easy to prove their falsehood, restoring the truth to prevent the spread of misinformation and urban legends artfully created by those who, on the pastures of the entire community, have been living like parasites for years.
Total transparency and zero AGEA funds
The accusations made against the Authority are the result of profound technical ignorance or, worse, blatant bad faith. The Park’s budget, both in its preventive and final forms, is a public document, certified and freely consultable by anyone. A possibility that evidently escaped Mr. Rossi but not us at Salviamo L’Orso. An unequivocal truth emerges from the accounting data: the Park Authority has never requested nor ever collected a single cent of AGEA contributions or any other welfare measure calculated on the area of the hectares under management.
The administrative transparency of the Authority is total and leaves no room for fanciful interpretations. The Park rents some areas owned by the municipalities, some of them wooded, others intended for grazing, always with the consent of the municipalities themselves, which derive much more from these rents than the paltry grazing fida paid by the farmers, and with the sole purpose of preserving natural environments that, in some cases, can be devastated and erased by overgrazing. After all, it would be appropriate to remind Mr. Rossi that nature conservation is the very mission of the Board.
The challenge of transparency on tax-exempt funds
Having rejected the falsity of the accusations, we would instead like to reverse the focus of the debate, inviting Rossi and his cronies to a similar transparent operation. It would be extremely useful, and in the public interest, to understand how much public funds, entirely tax-free, have been received over the years by the individuals now making these instrumental accusations.
We publicly invite the theorists of “mountain traditions” to show their corporate balance sheets, making explicit the real relationship between private capital invested in the territory and the amount of non-repayable grants received from the European Union for compensatory allowances.
The complaint: a drugged market that harms real pastoralists
The real problem of upland management is not the Park’s protective action, but the financial speculation that threatens to suffocate the real mountain economy. It is time to initiate a serious cost-benefit assessment of the management of collective pastures and civic uses.
The current mechanism allows a few “privileged” people to pay derisory concession amounts – a few tens of euros per head – in exchange for disproportionate economic returns provided by Europe on the basis of mere area, often for herds left in the wild with almost zero living costs. This is not pastoralism: it is financial speculation that distorts the land market and takes vital resources away from real pastoralists.
Salviamo l’Orso and Io non ho paura del lupo will continue to defend the latter against those who use the mountains solely as an instrument of parasitic rent at the expense of the community and will continue to emphasize, in regional and national political venues, the need to revise the entire system of contributions, which has now turned into a waste of public money diverted from other and more useful purposes for the inland and Apennine areas.
> Download the press release in full
Cover photo by Massimo Millo.