It should make you smile, yet the sense of the resolution of the Municipal Council of Baceno, a town of 870 inhabitants in the province of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola in Piedmont, is grotesquely worrying. The purpose of the document is to declare the municipal area "free from wolves and bears".
In what terms a territory is declared "free" from wild animals remains a mystery, especially when it comes to species particularly protected by national and Community laws, which makes it implicit that it is also the duty of small Administrations to commit themselves to respecting the Law and today it foresees, for the knowledge of the Municipality of Baceno, their strong protection.
Going into the merits of the resolution, there would be many points to highlight, starting with the premises, which specify "that wolves and bears are not harmless animals to cuddle” that we are facing a “dramatic increase in the number of large wild predators” and concludes with the resolution, which, asserting that “wolves and bears pose a threat to human life” undertakes both to “welcome and support, in accordance with the law, all the measures adopted by associations and organizations committed to the establishment of a “Regional territory free from bears and wolves"and "to authorize the mayor to undertake by all possible legal means the necessary measures to ensure that the municipal area of Baceno remains free from wolves and bears and public safety is guaranteed".
On what technical and scientific basis a Municipality makes these declarations and undertakes in these terms remains a mystery, especially in the face of complex topics such as the ethology of these animals, their management and specific interventions that go beyond the competence of a municipality. It also makes you smile that a municipality is committed to becoming "free from these animals”, which for knowledge of the same are equipped with legs and move independently beyond municipal, regional and national borders, as well as all wildlife, even the one that scares us less but which is in fact responsible today for damage to crops and people in a certainly more important way than the large carnivores in question.
In conclusion, in our opinion there is still a lot of work to be done so that documents of this kind remain only a memory of this complex period where the lack of knowledge, the complexity of coexisting with the natural environment and the spread of disinformation produce questionable institutional documents.
The resolution can be read at this link