Trial in Italy postponed
Newsletter, 01.07.2015
The hearing of the hunter, which shot two Northern Bald Ibises in 2012, has been postponed to December 2015 due to a change of the judge in the process. Indeed, after 4 years, if the lawsuit is not concluded with a verdict it will be closed due to the prescription terms. However, our Italian partners are doing their best to avoid this and some time is still left.
Delays would help the offender, who knows about his bad position in a trial, since his main justification is that he was not informed of the presence of the birds in the area and that he mistook the Northern Bald Ibises for Wood Pigeons. However, if a hunter cannot distinguish these two species, he seems hardly able to comply with the hunting rules, regardless if he would have been informed about the NBI project or not. In any case, the process will increase the awareness of the project among the Italian hunters, especially because there is a good ongoing communication with the Italian hunting associations. This is a positive payoff for our project in any case.
Now we have to wait for the next hearing in December, but meanwhile we try to start the civil lawsuit to sue for payment of the economic damages.
In parallel, we try to keep up a high public attention. It is of high relevance for the trial and for the campaign against illegal hunting in in general, that international institutions like the European Commission and the International Advisory Group for the Northern Bald Ibis as well as various Italian Institutions and NGOs have stressed their interest in and the relevance of the process in writing a number of supporting letters.
Apart of this not very pleasant but highly important topic, I can inform you that the season develops in a very positive way. A total of 17 chicks fledge in the breeding areas Burghausen/Bavaria and Kuchl/Salzburg. And in Seekirchen am Wallersee/Salzburg we train 32 juveniles to follow the microlight. The training is going quite well, we already accomplish flights up to several kilometres.
Picture: Flight training at Seekirchen am Wallersee/Country of Salzburg; Daniela Tritscher and Pablo Przesang. Picture J Fritz.
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