Editorial

From the President of LIPU, Aldo Verner

Dear Members,

I had the pleasure of being at Crava Morozzo – the first oasis in LIPU’s story – upon the celebration of its fortieth birthday, just as I attended the twentieth birthday celebrations at Santa Luce and Castel di Guido. Every member should experience at least one of these events, to appreciate the beauty of these areas restored to nature but also to see, with their own eyes, what the work of volunteers can do – the fruit of dedication, effort, skill and imagination. The same imagination, then, that Franco Bergese, Ada Gazzola and Tomaso Giraudo had when they ‘saw’, at the end of the 1970s, that those cultivated fields and two small hydroelectric plants near the Pesio cascade could become a splendid oasis, the first in what is now a long series. LIPU’s oases are precious places of great natural value, but are also of real importance for people, who thanks to them rediscover a lost link with nature.

Nature: a magical word that we in LIPU have in our hearts. In the pages of this fine winter issue of Ali you can read of some of the things that LIPU has done in 2019 to defend nature. Science, projects, environmental education, the protection of game species, the fight against poaching – so many successes are due to the professionalism and enthusiasm that we put into all our initiatives, from north to south, into our voluntary schemes, and into the work of our staff, work that every year makes us proud and worthy of the trust that you, dear members, regularly place in us.

On the subject of poaching, while our young people are involved in Sardinia in the removal of traps aimed at small migrant species, there follow – one after another – confiscations, and reports from LIPU’s wardens against ‘absent-minded’ hunters and poachers who shoot at cars, use forbidden tape lures, or keep birds caught in illegal nets. Our wardens are volunteers who, together with the forces of law and order, dedicate their free time to opposing these destructive practices. It would be lovely to live in a world that had no need of oases and hunting wardens, where the laws were always respected. At the moment, though, this is not the case. And so it is necessary to increase the number of wardens, have them in all regions, and extend their activities. With this in mind, I am asking our members to think carefully about the possibility of becoming a LIPU warden, working directly for the protection of nature. We want to increase the size of the team, to reinforce it, and to proceed in such a way that the land is safeguarded as far as possible and that the law is respected.

Contents

• 2020 – a Super Year for the Environment
• Impossible Interview: Blue Rock Thrush
• Crava Morozzo anniversary
• The Planet on Fire

« Back to archives