“This morning we couldn’t free the birds, that made us hard of heart. We spend hours attacked in all ways but in the end if we can save one bird and set it free to fly in the sky, that’s a great satisfaction for us.”

Born in Milan in 1978, Rutigliano has always been passionate about wild animals. At the age of 14, he received his first pair of binoculars as a birthday’s present, and discovered the world of the birds. But Rutigliano believed “Enjoying nature without doing anything to protect it, it is like feeling a false love”. So at 18 he started volunteering for the movement against bird trapping in Italy. Rutigliano holds a degree in anthropology and worked for two years in the Ecuadorian amazon to implement fauna and flora mangement plans together with the indigenous populations Achuar. In 2008 he returned to his first passion:protecting European birds from hunters and trappers and leading Committee Against Bird Slaughter (CABS) anti-poaching camps in the Mediterranean.