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PETITION TO THE
EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND THE GOVERNMENTS
OF ITALY AND BULGARIA |
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In order to stop the poaching and the trade of protected animal species as well to achieve the adaptation of a coherent legislation aiming at an effective protection of all migratory birds in combination with their living range without consideration of political frontiers.
Certain hunters from the European Union, restricted by the severe regulations to respect the natural heritage of their home countries, export a destructive behaviour to Eastern Europe (especially to Bulgaria) forbidden in Western European countries.
On the 7th of October 1998 thirty Italian hunters just going to Bulgaria via Varna Airport, taking with them in their suitcases more than 18,000 dead birds of 28 different and protected species.
This kind of imperialism by rich hunters, which plunders the fauna of the accession candidates of the European Union, is very serious:
- because it violates the European directives and endangers so the survival of great number of endangered species;
- because it shows that the mental attitude is not very progressed in Western European countries and that the first possible occasion rouses evil reflexes;
- because it hinders the effective implementation of bilateral co-operation projects and endangers so the rapprochement between Eastern and Western Europe;
- because it releases strong temptations in the local populations of the accession candidates, while they are in terrible economic difficulties;
- because it denies the principle of sustainable development based on the protection and increased estimation of natural heritage.
That is the reason that Le Balkan-Bulgaria, Le Balkan-France, WWF-Italy and their partners ask of the European Commission and Parliament as well as of the governments of Italy and Bulgaria:
- to prevent the entrance and trade in the European Union of birds poached in countries outside the Union;
- to undertake all possible measures to stop such disastrous illegal hunting practices;
- to include all European countries in the politics to conserve protected species and sites.
With my signature, I support the french-bulgarian-italian resolution because the protection of vulnerable species and especially of migratory species is not only the concern of one country, but depends on international co-operation and solidarity.
Birds don’t know frontiers.
