Bird poaching near Brescia: Thousands of songbirds in nets and cooking pots every year

In Villa Carcina, a village in the Val Trompia north of Brescia, Carabinieri caught a 56-year-old man in the act. He was just taking birds out of trapping nets he had set up near his house. The court in Brescia confirmed the arrest in expedited proceedings and ordered house arrest.

What the Carabinieri found in Villa Carcina

The inspection was part of Operation «Pettirosso 2026», named after the Italian word for robin. The Carabinieri's SOARDA special unit carries it out every year during the autumn migration, supported by the Carabinieri Forestali. According to QuiBrescia, the items seized were a functioning semi-automatic rifle, 95 cartridges, an air pistol, eleven trapping nets, a prohibited electronic bird call and a cage trap.

In the nets, officers found three dead robins and 23 live birds, including huntable and protected species, as BresciaToday reports. The man was already under the supervision of social services: he had been given a final sentence of four years for money laundering and was serving it under an alternative measure. A ban on weapons and ammunition was also imposed on him (il Dolomiti). Confirmation of the arrest is not a verdict; the presumption of innocence applies to the new allegations. The reports do not say what the birds were intended for.

What the inspection figures show

The case is part of a long series. As early as 2009, the Committee Against Bird Slaughter noted that poaching was more widespread in no other Italian province than in Brescia (Species Protection Letter 2010). In 'Pettirosso 2025', the Carabinieri reported 135 people along the main migration routes in the Lombardy and Veneto pre-Alps and seized over 2,460 birds, 1,110 illegal trapping devices, 135 firearms and over 13,000 cartridges (Carabinieri). The scale has been the same for years: in 2021 the Carabinieri seized 3,336 birds in the same operation (Greenreport), and in 2023 the figure was 3,564 (BresciaToday). In September 2026, the 'Balia Nera' operation reported 93 dead pied flycatchers, over 300 traps and 23 nets (QuiBrescia).

In the province of Brescia alone, the Carabinieri Forestali recorded 67 reports, 903 birds killed and 264 caught alive in 2025 up to mid-October (Bresciaoggi). According to the Italian bird protection organisation LIPU, the offences are largely committed by recreational hunters with a valid hunting licence.

Where the birds end up

Two markets keep illegal bird trapping going. The first is the kitchen. Dishes such as 'polenta e osei' or the 'spiedo bresciano' are traditionally prepared with small birds. According to the Carabinieri, over 1,500 of the birds illegally killed in 2025 were destined for consumption or for the black-market trade with restaurants. In Serle in 2021, Carabinieri found 222 plucked, deep-frozen birds in a restaurant, including thrushes, robins, pied flycatchers and chaffinches (QuiBrescia). In the Val Trompia, the same valley as Villa Carcina, Carabinieri caught 23 employees and officials of the Comunità Montana at a banned bird meal in their own official headquarters (Dissapore).

The second market is live decoy birds. Italian hunting act 157/1992 allows recreational hunters to use live decoy birds in cages when hunting thrushes, larks and other species, provided they come from a breeding stock and are marked (Animal Law Italia). Because demand is high, wild-caught birds are passed off as captive-bred with tampered rings (Kodami). The Court of Cassation has held that tampering with such rings is punishable as forgery of official seals (LAC). From one dealer in the Franciacorta, 700 birds with forged rings were seized (Bresciaoggi).

Controversial relaxations in Lombardy

In 2022, the Lombardy regional council passed a law allowing recreational hunters to hand over small birds of huntable species free of charge to innkeepers (Kodami). Bird and animal welfare organisations criticise this as a way of circumventing the national ban on sales and warn of covert trade. Plucked birds without beaks and feet can hardly be assigned to a species: whether a protected robin is on the plate can often only be established through DNA analysis (Kodami).

In January 2025, the regional government adopted new rules for the marking of decoy birds: instead of closed rings, open bands are also to be permitted. According to the animal welfare organisation ENPA, this affects 246’629 birds, and 200’000 euros of public money are earmarked for the new markings. ENPA criticises the decision as a 'sanatoria' that could retroactively legalise illegal wild captures, because an open band can be fitted to any bird (ENPA). In April 2025, the Lombardy administrative court rejected a request by the animal welfare associations to suspend the decision temporarily (QuiBrescia). The lawfulness of the decision itself has therefore not yet been settled.

Decoy birds are also in the spotlight within politics itself. In autumn 2023, the Carabinieri filed a complaint against regional councillor Carlo Bravo of Fratelli d’Italia over allegedly manipulated rings on his thrushes (Il Giorno). In June 2024, the Court of Cassation rejected his appeal against the seizure of the birds (Fanpage). No judgment on the substance is known; the presumption of innocence applies.

The dispute is a long-standing one. In 2014, the European Commission opened infringement proceedings against Italy over the capture of wild birds for use as decoys (ANSA). In 2019, Lombardy nevertheless wanted to have 12’700 wild birds caught with nets, until the government in Rome reprimanded the region and the administrative court halted the decision (Animal Law Italia). In 2025, the region again failed in court with its authorisation of almost 100’000 chaffinches, as Wild beim Wild reported.

Why this concerns Switzerland

Robins, thrushes and finches that migrate south across the Alps in autumn come from all over central and northern Europe, including birds that breed or rest in Switzerland. The Lombard Pre-Alps are one of their main routes. That the region also has a poaching problem with other wild animals was shown on 17 October by the case in the Parco del Ticino. According to one study, around 25 million birds are illegally killed every year across the Mediterranean region, as Wild beim Wild has documented.

Bird hunting has not disappeared in Switzerland either: in the canton of St. Gallen, recreational hunters are still allowed to shoot Eurasian jays, even though Zurich has protected them.

Context

During the operation in Villa Carcina, 23 live birds were seized, and the Carabinieri remove thousands of traps and nets from circulation year after year. Yet the figures have looked much the same for decades. As long as recreational hunters are allowed to use live decoy birds in cages and small birds can legally find their way into kitchens, there remains a demand that illegal trapping serves. A region that relaxes the marking of decoy birds and permits the supply of small birds to restaurants makes life harder for precisely the checks on which its own Carabinieri depend.