With great concern we bring to your attention a video released by Paolo Piacentini that highlights serious violations and degradation in the Gran Sasso Monti della Laga National Park, particularly in the Jacci di Verre area.
Regarding these events, we would like to make a few points:
- The activity is not impromptu but planned and scheduled for at least all weekends as long as snowfall permits. Not only that, there are even nighttime outings with DJs and speakers for impromptu moonlight parties. To prevent this ongoing disturbance, planned in contravention of rules and regulations, Salviamo l’Orso and the Stazione Ornitologica Abruzzese ONLUS sent a complaint to the Gran Sasso e Monti della Laga National Park Authority to the Carabinieri Forestali and the Environmental Assessment Commission of the Abruzzo Region
- The activity was well known to the Gran Sasso and Monti della Laga National Park Authority, which had received in mid-December a copy of the warning notice that CAI Abruzzo and CAI Marche had sent to the mayor. CAI’s warning had been given media prominence, but this did not cause the park to turn the spotlight on the issue.
- In response to those on other pages who have invoked the right of some “poor” mountaineers to make ends meet by organizing this activity we summarily point out that a snowmobile costs no less than 15,000 euros. So, an association that has several available doesn’t really seem so “poor”…or does it?
It would be interesting to know how recent proclamations of wanting to encourage the arrival and expansion of the Marsican bear in the park can be reconciled with this land management. Just think how much damage the episode witnessed by Piacentini at Jacci di Verre would have done to a bear that had been present in the ‘area at this sensitive time, when females give birth. She would have been forced to leave her den in a hurry because of the noise and disturbance caused by the snowmobiles and thus abandon her newborn cubs.