Paolo Sparvoli: Criticism of Hunting as an Alleged Threat

In Italy, the president of the hunting association ANLC, Paolo Sparvoli, is warning against the alleged danger of an “anti-hunting ideology.”

In a piece published on the hunting-affiliated portal Caccia Passione under the title “Time Is a Gentleman and Anti-Hunting Ideology Will Prove Its Danger,” he portrays recreational hunters as a persecuted minority and frames criticism of hunting as the real problem.

Anyone who reads the text carefully will recognise one thing above all: here speaks a hunting association president who cultivates a victim narrative for recreational hunters while systematically obscuring the violence that hunting inflicts on animals, nature, and other people.

Mafia Killers as a Benchmark, Recreational Hunters as a Moral Elite

Even Paolo Sparvoli’s opening is revealing. He references the Mafia murderer Giovanni Brusca, who was convicted of more than a hundred killings, and emphasises that even such a serious criminal is entitled to civil rights such as the presumption of innocence and the right to a defence. In the very next sentence, he argues that recreational hunters are denied such rights in practice. He claims they have been harassed, insulted, and subjected to ever stricter regulations for decades.

The message is clear. On one side stands the Mafia killer, who is allegedly treated better; on the other, the recreational hunters, whom Sparvoli transfigures into “the most upright, healthiest, and most thoroughly vetted citizens.” Criticism of recreational hunting thus appears not as a legitimate democratic objection, but as a hysterical overreaction to particularly law-abiding citizens.

This comparison is not only tasteless. It trivializes organized crime while simultaneously relativizing the real violence that recreational hunters inflict on animals every day. The fact that wild animals in the Sparvoli system evidently do not deserve “civil rights” is tellingly swept under the rug in this construction.

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Media, animal welfare advocates, civil society as the enemy

Sparvoli declares the public debate over the Italian hunting reform to be a “brutish and indiscriminate attack” on recreational hunters. He speaks of a “press uproar” and of “crude and hysterical justice” in blogs and social media. The media outlets that critically examine hunting and hunting policy he labels “information troops” aligned with “animalist ideology”, who “massacre” their keyboards to spread avalanches of clichés and lies.

Rather than engaging substantively with the arguments of environmental and animal welfare organizations, these are summarily dismissed as ideologically blinkered enemies. Anyone who warns of safety risks, animal suffering, or the erosion of protective standards is regarded, in this logic, not as part of a democratic debate, but as a manipulative adversary who drives “less well-informed readers” into a panic.

In this way, the hunting federation president shifts the focus. The question is no longer whether further deregulation of hunting in Italy endangers nature, animals, and people. What is at stake is the wounded self-image of a lobby that is losing its grip on the dominant narrative in society.

Straw-man arguments instead of engagement with the reform

A further building block of Sparvoli’s rhetoric: he singles out the most absurd, exaggerated accusations in order to ridicule all criticism of the hunting reform. In his text he lists a series of buzzwords such as “shooting law”, “Wild West hunting”, “year-round hunting”, “guns under beach umbrellas”, or “hunting and dog competitions in the middle of the night”, and summarily dismisses them all as fact-free fairy tales.

In reality, the planned reform of Italy’s hunting law 157/92 is being criticized for good reason by experts and environmental associations. It shifts the emphasis from protection toward “management”, grants greater weight to agricultural interests, and aims at fewer restrictions on recreational hunting. Media reports speak of a “reform of hunting with fewer limits”, which environmental organizations have clearly rejected.

Among the points of criticism are:

• the expansion of hunting interventions in the name of “wildlife management”,
• the increased opening up in favour of agricultural interests,
• the risk that protected areas and recreational spaces for the public will come under greater hunting pressure.

Rather than addressing these core points, Sparvoli resorts to caricatures of hunting criticism. This makes it easier to express outrage, but avoids having to answer uncomfortable questions about the role of hunting in a modern society.

Biodiversity as a Shield for More Shooting

The intellectual contortions become particularly apparent when Paolo Sparvoli speaks about biodiversity. He calls critics of hunting ignorant and accuses them of overlooking the true threats to biodiversity. He attributes responsibility to “opportunistic species” such as crows, foxes and wild boar, as well as invasive species such as nutria, sacred ibis and grey squirrels. The real culprits, he claims, are those who restrict hunting in protected areas. These areas, he argues, become “free zones” in which such species “sow death and destruction”.

The scientific literature paints a different picture. The global IPBES assessment on biodiversity and ecosystem services identifies the following as the primary direct drivers of species extinction:

• land use change and habitat destruction,
• direct exploitation of animals and plants,
• climate change,
• pollution,
• invasive species

Recreational hunting falls under “direct exploitation”. In many regions, hunting activity is itself a central cause of the decline of wild animals. A study on wildlife hunting shows that uncontrolled or market-driven recreational hunting can be one of the greatest threats to biodiversity, particularly when it is based on economic incentives and trophy hunting.

In Europe, recreational hunting has also been demonstrably used as a pathway for the introduction of invasive species. A review on “Hunting as a source of alien species” notes that recreational hunting was an important vector for the introduction of non-native species over the past century, for example through the release of game animals for shooting.

The same applies to large ungulates: recreational hunting is today the primary cause of death for many populations and simultaneously the central management instrument. Nevertheless, the populations of some species have continued to grow despite sharply increased kill numbers. This demonstrates how limited the regulatory effect of hunting “control” actually is, especially when other drivers such as intensive agriculture or the absence of natural predators are at work.

Sparvoli’s claim that hunting bans or hunting-free protected areas are the primary threat to biodiversity turns reality on its head. Anyone who takes biodiversity seriously must address habitats, traffic, agriculture, climate policy, and also the role of recreational hunters — not ideological enemy images.

The suppressed danger: violence and accidents in recreational hunting

While the ANLC president condemns hunting criticism as “terrorizing” for uninformed readers, he remains silent about a very concrete risk: recreational hunting itself.

In France, official statistics have recorded dozens of serious hunting accidents per season for years, including several fatalities. In 2021/22 alone, around 90 accidents were registered, eight of them fatal. And this in a country where the hunting lobby operates in much the same way as in Italy.

Even in Switzerland, a comparatively strictly regulated hunting country, an average of four recreational hunters die each year in the course of their leisure activity, with additional injuries on top of that. Studies from various European countries show that hunting accidents are disproportionately associated with firearms and falls from raised hides.

In addition to these direct risks to humans, there is the systematic killing of millions of wild animals across Europe. An analysis of hunting tallies for migratory birds estimates that many millions of birds die from hunting each year in EU member states and Switzerland alone.

About this violence — legalized and normalized — Paolo Sparvoli does not say a single word. It does not fit the image of the “upstanding citizen” who is being unjustly persecuted by society.

When the hunting president speaks of “danger”

At the end of his text, Sparvoli repeats his central threat. Time will show, he suggests, how dangerous the “anti-hunting ideology” really is. The “ultra-orthodox manipulators” will then be confronted with their ecological responsibility.

In reality, time and research show something quite different.

• The main drivers of species extinction lie in agriculture, land consumption, the climate crisis, and the overexploitation of wildlife. Hunting plays no minor role in this.
• In many countries, there is a growing public sensitivity to animal suffering and to safe, hunting-free recreational spaces.
• The Italian hunting reform, which Sparvoli defends so resolutely, is criticized by dozens of organizations as an attack on nature and public safety.

The more the hunting lobby attempts to immunize itself against criticism with apocalyptic language, the more apparent its problem becomes. This is not about a handful of “animalist ideologues” who are opposed to everything on principle. It is about a broad public debate over whether, in the 21st century, it is still justifiable to hunt wildlife for recreational interests, disturb habitats, and accept risks to people.

When hunting president Paolo Sparvoli declares criticism of hunting a danger and portrays recreational hunters as victims, that is above all one thing: a politically motivated distraction from the violence on which the hobby of hunting continues to rest.