Lollobrigida's logical somersaults on "bioregulation"

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The ineffable Minister Lollobrigida recently declared: "Mankind is reclaiming the right to be a bioregulator. As I've said in the past, humans are the only sentient beings, because they are the only ones capable of translating scientific data into concrete actions. Animals are also sentient, in the sense that they too suffer, but I know of no animal that can regulate the ecosystem based on scientific data ."

Evidently stung by the criticism heaped upon him for his quip about animals not being sentient beings , the minister goes one better, equating sentient perception with the ability to proceed using science: a breathtaking logical somersault. But that's the least of it .

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Meanwhile, the idea of ​​a "right" to regulate natural processes finds no support in a legal system: there is no national or European law that grants humans a right to "bioregulation" , while the Constitution and Community directives instead establish the protection of biodiversity as a collective interest to be preserved.

Above all, the ministerial wisdom shines through in the underlying concept: the bioregulator by right is the hunter armed with a rifle, cartridges, and a desire to kill , the only one capable of "translating scientific data" by shooting mammals or birds during migration, roaming everywhere, even on private property, or setting up hides around the country. An imbecility never heard before, born of an ancient human arrogance that believes it can govern nature by brandishing a shotgun.

But then, if humans are truly the great "bioregulator" they claim to be, why have we sacrificed habitats, extinguished entire populations, and disrupted entire natural cycles? Suffice it to say that according to the 2019 IPBES report, up to one million species are threatened with extinction, while three-quarters of land and two-thirds of oceans have undergone transformations due to human activity; the Living Planet Report 2024 reports an average loss of 73 percent of vertebrate populations over the last fifty years; the "planetary boundaries" model indicates that six of the nine critical boundaries—climate change, biosphere integrity, biogeochemical cycles, land use, water resources, and new substances—have already been crossed; in terms of biomass, livestock represents 62 percent of all mammals, humans 34 percent, and wild mammals just 4 percent; finally, our ecological footprint far exceeds the planet's regenerative capacity. This is in general, but, if we look specifically at hunting, it has left behind an endless trail of its own environmental disasters and extinctions .

Our species, even when it hunted not for pleasure but for survival, almost certainly contributed substantially to the extinction of megafauna that occurred starting 50,000 years ago; but it's obviously even more unacceptable to think that modern hunting is a useful "bioregulator." Let's look at some examples of what we've "bioregulated" with hunting. Just a few examples, because an encyclopedia wouldn't be enough to cover them all.

In recent centuries, the American passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius), once numerous in North America, was literally exterminated: from enormous flocks to extinction due to sport hunting. The flightless great auk and the Steller's swan, a gigantic marine mammal discovered in 1741, both disappeared within a few decades of systematic hunting.

The marsupial wolf (thylacine), for whose extermination a reward was even established for each killed animal, became extinct in captivity in 1936, having been eliminated by gunfire from Tasmania long before that; moreover, many populations of wolves and other predators have also been locally extirpated by gunfire, without reaching the point of extinction of the species (for now, but there have been cases in which it has come very close).

In the seas, massive whaling and shark hunting has decimated populations of apex predators, disrupting the balance that once controlled algal blooms and supported complex food webs. And what about the dodo, the very symbol of extinction, hunted to extinction?

Let's look at our country: In Italy, modern hunting causes significant and documented damage on multiple fronts, from the balance of ecosystems to road safety, including environmental contamination and the loss of biodiversity.

In terms of biodiversity, hunting pressure removes millions of birds from the wild every year: as documented by ISPRA, between the 2017/2018 and 2022/2023 hunting seasons, over 6 million birds were killed in Italy. According to ISPRA, for the 36 huntable species, the harvest volumes from 2017 to 2023 regularly exceed ecological equilibrium thresholds, weakening already fragile populations .

Even more serious is the overall state of conservation: 30 percent of the approximately 250 nesting species in Italy are in “poor” conditions and a further 33 percent are in “inadequate” conditions, with hunting among the main causes of decline .

Added to this is the notorious problem of pollution from ammunition : lead from cartridges, ISPRA reports, poisons various species (especially at the top of the food chain) and contaminates soil and water, posing a risk to humans as well, as lead concentrations in the environment reach levels that disrupt soil organisms—earthworms, insects, and microorganisms—and compromise the food chain all the way to our plates. There are also concrete examples of how in our country the famous "bioregulatory" management interventions implemented with shotguns fail miserably.

In the Euganean Hills, so-called "selective hunting" of wild boar has become an almost daily ritual: for over a decade, teams of selective controllers have been operating nonstop across the territory, but the results are always the same, even worse. Research has shown that culling fragments of the population without any integrated strategy—no reintroduction of natural predators, no territorial coordination, no measures to reduce artificial food sources—does not reduce wild boar numbers in the medium term. Studies launched as early as 2015 have highlighted how, despite repeated culling plans and control campaigns implemented by the Park, the density of Sus scrofa has not undergone stable declines, instead fueling new waves of damage to agriculture and tensions with residents .

Yet in 2022 alone, more than 3,000 wild boars were culled in the Euganean Hills, an economic and logistical undertaking that drained public resources without significantly reducing the impact on grain and crops . Every time the success of an operation is boasted about, the paradox recurs the next day: new wild boars fill the gaps created by the culls, their litters face less competition and grow larger, forcing farmers and local authorities to start over.

All this demonstrates that human hunting has never been a form of bioregulation: it has always been, and continues to be, hyperpredation that fragments habitats, eliminates species, and weakens the resilience of ecosystems.

It's time to "bioregulate" certain claims and absurdities , of which some government officials seem to be absolute champions; and if, as he claims, the minister knows of no animals that, based on scientific data, are capable of regulating the ecosystem, we, on the other hand, know many animals in matters of ecology that ignore such scientific data or stubbornly pretend to ignore it.

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