Italy's new hunting act: CNR researcher accuses government of deliberate language manipulation

On 13 July 2026, the online magazine «Altreconomia» published an article that captures the currently most heated debate in Italian conservation policy.

It was written by Michelangelo Morganti, a researcher at the Consiglio nazionale delle ricerche (CNR), a biologist with a doctorate and around sixty scientific publications, and a lecturer in Regional Fauna at the University of Pavia. His accusation against the Meloni government is unequivocal: the draft bill to reorganise hobby hunting is a work of deliberate conceptual manipulation.hobby hunting is a work of deliberate conceptual manipulation.

What it is about

The Disegno di legge 1552 amends numerous provisions of Act 157/1992, which regulates the practice of hobby hunting in Italy. The Senate has already passed the draft; it now lies before the Chamber of Deputies.

The 1992 act did not come about voluntarily. Italy had to implement the European directives «Habitats» (92/43/EEC) and «Birds» (79/409/EEC) and build a national network of protected areas, the Rete Natura 2000.

Morganti describes 157/1992 as a complex, balanced framework that permits hobby hunting but subordinates it to the conservation of fauna. Hunting is prohibited during the spring migration and the breeding season. Tuesday and Friday are considered days of «absolute hunting silence», on which all living creatures, humans included, can move safely through the forest. Fixed hunting hides may neither be sold nor bequeathed, unless the heir is themselves a hobby hunter. The total number of hides may not exceed that of the 1989/90 season. Animals killed from hunting hides or from hunting operations may not be sold, only consumed privately. Hunting operations may not, by statute, generate a profit. And every hobby hunter may choose only one form of hunting.

It is precisely these detailed rules that are largely eliminated by the Ddl 1552.

«Dynamic» instead of preserving

The draft openly declares the change of course. A «purely conservative view of nature» is being abandoned in favour of a «dynamic and multifunctional perspective», and this is even presented as progress.

This is exactly where Morganti's central accusation begins. He speaks of «gaslighting»: the deliberate manipulation of the meanings of words and a misleading narrative intended to give the law the appearance of an innovation it does not possess. The Ddl 1552 is, according to Morganti, a meticulous hollowing-out of 157/1992, readable as revenge by those who for three decades perceived the law as a restriction of their hunting freedoms. That only the most conservative part of the hunting world is speaking here is also shown by the resignations at the top of Arci Caccia, which openly opposes the draft.

Four examples of reinterpretation

The hobby hunter as conservationist. Article 1 paragraph 2 stipulates that the hobby hunter «contributes to the protection of biodiversity». Morganti disagrees: selective, scientifically guided killings of problematic animals within the framework of wildlife management may in individual cases be necessary. That hobby hunting as such promotes biodiversity, however, is supported by nothing. Hunting reduces animal populations through killing. Whether, and under what narrowly defined conditions, an intervention serves species protection is scientifically disputed and in any case is not the standard case of recreational hunting.

Release as a business model. According to Morganti, in many places pheasants, hares, grey partridges and wild boars are first bred and released just so that they can be hunted at all. He describes the practice as one of the main sources of genetic contamination of wild populations; it has favoured the spread of invasive alien species and produces population densities above the carrying capacity of the habitat. Anyone who continually releases wild boars creates a problem for whose solution hunting can then declare itself indispensable. This assessment coincides with the statements of the two Italian specialist societies Atit and Ciso on the Ddl 1552 (see sources).

Falconry as a fig leaf. The authors invoke the UNESCO recognition of falconry as intangible cultural heritage in order to ennoble hobby hunting as a «national tradition». Morganti counters: the reference serves to cloak a reform of modern hunting with firearms and night vision devices in the aura of a millennia-old tradition.

The doctored figure. The introduction to the draft speaks of around 300’000 hobby hunters. According to the Ministry of the Interior, however, 630’000 hunting licences were issued in 2025. The comparison is not exactly congruent, since not every licence issued is also actively used. What is decisive for Morganti, though, is the political use of the lower figure: it serves as justification for deregulations — no more rest days, no limit on wait hunting posts, no commitment to a single form of hunting. Yet the new law creates precisely the economic incentives to raise the number of hobby hunters again.

The legalisation of the driven hunt in the snow appears almost grotesque. The draft justifies it by arguing that in snow «both dogs and hunters are held to heightened attentiveness». Morganti dryly asks: heightened compared to what, when the alternative would simply be not to hunt under such conditions.

Science is disinvited

Both the Associazione teriologica italiana (ATIT) and the Centro italiano studi ornitologici (CISO), the specialist societies of Italian mammal and bird researchers, have submitted detailed critical statements on the Ddl 1552. ATIT has published a «document of scientifically grounded observations» on the draft, while CISO has publicly rejected it as exceeding the limits of sustainability.

The most serious point comes last. The obligation to obtain an expert opinion from the Istituto superiore per la protezione e la ricerca ambientale (Ispra) before taking hunting decisions is being scrapped. With this, Italian wildlife policy loses its scientific corrective.

The profit thesis

Morganti's core thesis is this: the actual aim of the reform is neither tradition nor nature conservation, but profit. He bases it on concrete changes in the legal text. Ddl 1552 permits the expansion of fixed hides and the introduction of new mobile ones, the marketing of the products of hunting and the running of hunting operations (aziende faunistico-venatorie) on a for-profit basis. All three points were expressly prohibited under the 1992 law. Indirectly, according to Morganti, this also expands the market for weapons, ammunition, night vision devices, lures, equipment and services.

For the first time, hunting is not merely regulated but conceived as an economic sector to be developed. The hunting act of 1992 sought to prevent wild animals from becoming a commodity. In the author's assessment, Ddl 1552 goes in the opposite direction. Morganti ends with a Latin sentence: Mala tempora currunt, sed peiora parantur. Bad times are upon us, but worse are being prepared.

How the reinterpretation reaches the classroom

A second conflict, which continues to have repercussions today, shows how this reinterpretation is concretely carried into society. The jurist and publicist Fabio Balocco had sharply attacked, in the «Fatto Quotidiano», an initiative by the provincial association of Crotone, in which hobby hunters were to talk to children in a primary school about environmental protection. His comparison: inviting a hobby hunter to talk about the environment is a little like inviting a serial killer to talk about love.

The hunting portal «Caccia Passione» was outraged by the wording and demanded a right of reply in the newspaper. As recently as April 2026, the same portal reported on educational projects by the hunting foundation UNA in schools, and in June 2026 on nest-box campaigns by hobby hunters at three schools in Macerata.

The logic is the same as with Ddl 1552. Those who kill wild animals present themselves as their protectors. And the more often the equation is repeated, the more normal it sounds. More on the mechanisms behind it in the dossier Psychology of hobby hunting.

Editorial comment

What Morganti describes for Italy is familiar to us in Switzerland, right down to the choice of words. «Regulation» instead of killing, «stewardship» instead of management, the hobby hunter as a «bio-regulator». When a researcher from the national research council reaches for the term gaslighting to describe the language of a draft bill, a point has been reached where the debate is no longer conducted over facts, but over their renaming.

From the editorial team's point of view, the removal of the binding Ispra assessments is the real scandal: a state is abolishing scientific oversight of its own wildlife policy. Anyone who believes this will remain an Italian affair underestimates how quickly successful deregulation models cross the Alps. See also our campaigns against hobby hunting and the category animal rights.