We love Quail

At www.victorborg.com/html/hunting_malta_spring.html we interestingly read the following article -

 Malta’s Spring Massacres – As dawn breaks over Malta on 1 April, many of the country’s 12,000 licensed hunters will open fire on migratory birds with renewed vigour. It is a rush of excitement for hunters because this spring they can start hunting 10 days earlier than previous years, following the government’s decision, earlier this month, to trim the bird protection regulations.  Recommended by the Authority of Review (AOR) other trimmings include unprotecting the moorhen and water rail and allowing trapping in Spring for 12 days.

  Now hunters can shoot on quails and turtle doves for 7 weeks, as the birds stop over in the only European country that allows spring shooting on migratory birds. “The AOR restored a small fraction of what hunters lost after the updated 1993 regulations,” said the hunters’ association.

  But most Maltese will greet the ringing shots with dismay. Once a tradition most people respected, these days hunting arouses opposition from a growing generation that views hunting as barbaric.  Occasionally, the tension between hunters and environmentalists breaks into violent encounters.  Alternattiva Demokratika (AD), the green party, insist that most people oppose hunting. 

  Saviour Balzan, AD’s environment spokesperson, said: “None of the people in the AOR is an expert on bird migration. Their report is full of contradictions, inaccuracies and wrong concepts. They invented excuses to change the regulations.” AD accused the government of pruning the regulations to win hunters’ hearts before the general elections to be held within a year.

  The minister for the environment countered that the AOR members are experts in their fields. The government set up the AOR to review and recommend amends to the law after both hunters and environmentalists protested against the new law which entered into force in 1994 – hunters fumed that the restrictions trampled over their hobby while environmentalists said they were inadequate.  Appointed by the environment minister, 5 members formed the AOR: an economist, two experts in marine biology and fish-farming, an environmental scientist and an anthropologist.

  Before the AOR members convened, the hunters lobbied fiercely to water down the law. Although they make up just over 3% of the population, in a country where elections are decided on a knife-edge, hunters wield enough political power to shake the government.  They stormed the streets in protests, boycotted the local council elections, dumped oil in a wetland nature reserve and called on the environment parliamentary secretary to resign. In a hunting discussion, a hunter punched the environment secretary, who had to be put, as well as his aides, under police protection 24 hrs/day.

  In their review report 3 months ago the AOR recommendations to slash parts of the law hinged on three premises:  that hunting is weaved into Malta’s culture and tradition, there is no reliable data proving that millions of birds are killed, and that Malta lies outside the main migratory route. But a few inconsistencies leap from their report; in one place they wrote that they accept the argument that hunting and trapping in spring should be banned, but then lengthened the season for hunting and trapping in spring.

  Paul Portelli, Director of Birdlife Malta, accused the AOR members as “incompetent cowards who yielded to pressure by hunters.”

  The AOR’s report also rippled through the European Parliament. Several green MEP’s raised the issue, asking the EU Commission to make sure Malta raises its bird protection to EU standard before it is allowed to join the union.  Claudia Roth, the German spokesperson of the green group in the European Parliament, wrote in a letter to the Maltese prime minister:  “The green group is appalled at your government’s intention to take the recommendations of the AOR …. which go against the spirit of the Berne Convention.”  

  This is not the first time European politicians aired their concern about hunting. The government originally updated the bird protection regulations in 1993 after pressure from the EU and individual European countries.  Back then, the set of regulations that entered into force embraced the spirit of the EU’s Birds Directive, with 2 exceptions: allowing hunting in spring and trapping in autumn.

  Hunters defend trapping and spring hunting as traditions.  And, indeed, over this century hunting seeped into Malta’s culture, with the church blessing guns before the hunting season, poems praising hunting in literary books and politicians officially opening exhibitions of stuffed birds. But in the past decade institutions have distanced themselves from hunters, reflecting a shift in public opinion.  Hunters are partly to blame for today’s opposition.  Repeater guns, bird-song played on casette-players to lure birds and chasing birds at sea in outboard dinghies soured public opinion. Meanwhile, the number of hunters trebled in the last 30 years, and today there is as many young hunters as their fathers’ generation.  While hunters over 50 go hunting for a couple of weeks every year, many young hunters in their twenties tear through the countryside shooting birds, flushing, and blasting, birds of prey from wheat-fields
at dusk.

  And perhaps it’s because of this intensity that hunting ruffles so many feathers.  If all the hunters had to go shooting at one time, over 50 hunters would cram in every square kilometre of countryside. Knud Flensted, an ecologist at the Dansk Ornitologisk Forening (Birdlife Denmark) said: “Hunting in Malta has for many years been too intensive and almost completely out of control.  It affects the populations of European bird species, in particular birds of prey, herons, doves, quails, passerines.”

  In the book Fatal Flight, The Maltese Obsession with Killing Birds, Natalino Fenech estimated that “a minimum of 3 million birds are shot each year”, while 1-2.8 million trapped.  Yet it’s not the sheer numbers that make environmentalists wince, but the kind of birds downed. Fenech estimates that hunters’ annual toll includes 16-32,000 herons and egrets, 64-96,000 birds of prey, and 11,500 owls. Hunters dismiss these numbers as ’speculations’.

  “Hunters play down the existence of illegal hunting and hunting’s effect on bird populations,” Portelli said.  “The largest part of the hunt is on protected species.  Hunters shoot at protected species in the open, even in bird sanctuaries.  The police are not doing enough to control illegal hunting.”

  Three taxidermists busted by the police in the last 2 years offer a glimpse into the scale of illegal hunting. One had 2,000 frozen and stuffed birds, 90 per cent of them protected species; the next had 79 birds, virtually all of them protected;   while the other had 400 birds, also mostly protected. The police estimate that about 50 other taxidermists remain, all
operating illegally.

  Taxidermy is the main motive behind shooting at protected species. Like an athlete displaying medals, hunters prop the bird trophies in living-room cabinets.  In hunters’ circles, respect and pride go to the hunters with the largest collection displaying the rarest species.  A Griffon Vulture killed a few years ago was priced at about $5,064.  But hunters also shoot at birds for the thrill of it, then throwing away the birds which already feature in their collection or leaving them there to rot.

  Victor Galea Pace, a law-abiding hunter and major of the Victoria local council, reasoned: “Game birds have decreased so much that hunters get the urge to shoot protected birds.   Nowadays, Turtle Dove flocks on passage do not exceed 300.”

  In a report published last year, entitled Birds In Europe, Their Conservation Status, Birdlife International criticised spring hunting on Turtle Doves. “The decline [of the turtle dove] is likely to be due to severe drought in the species’ African wintering grounds, shooting in Winter and during spring migration …. spring shooting of the species should be stopped.”

  Hunters, however, see it otherwise.  Galea Pace  blames the drop in Turtle Dove numbers on habitat destruction. “Turtle doves and quails in spring are the only game-birds we get,” he argues. “We are accused of shooting birds on their way to breed but we only kill an insignificant number.”

  Flensted says he only wants to see more controls.  “Birdlife Denmark is not against hunting, but hunting both in Malta and Denmark should be kept on a level, where bird populations are not affected considerably and the interests of non-hunters respected. This is not the case in Malta. If the hunting pressure in the rest of Europe equalled Malta, it would be disastrous.”

 HOWEVER

The article fails to distinguish between regulated and unregulated hunting !! Turtle Dove and Quail are not on any endangered bird lists (although spoken as ‘ depleted’) www.birdlife.org/datazone/species/BirdsInEuropeII/BiE2004Sp194.pdf

- the need to curtail traditions in Malta, which are not damaging, will cause a reaction that will be indeed far more negative than the political benefits of one political party, a party which would like to achieve green control for its own aspirations.

The worst off are the birds !! for as the new age mother earth worshippers and the greens direct their energies and attacks towards the regulated hunting – which is not breaking any law or destroying endangered species -  such attacks by the aforementioned parties will destabilise regulated hunting and increase the unrestrained and unregulated hunting at the detriment of all bird life !!!! 

The Maltese authorities are also carryng out their task of catching the ‘baddies’ !

Are the authorities chasing the baddies ? Oh yes they are, read on – http://www.iar.org.uk/news/2008/mar08-4.shtml

March 2008

Maltese hunters detained after sea chase

Four illegal hunters have been detained by police in Malta after a lengthy high speed sea chase.

The men in a speedboat were first seen behaving very suspiciously on the western side of the island of Gozo. They were spotted by members of the Maritime Squadron’s Rapid Deployment Team who were on a routine patrol to combat illegal hunting. The team works hand in hand on this issue with the Administrative Law Enforcement (wildlife) police.

As the armed forces personnel approached the vessel it fled at high speed and the team gave chase in their interceptor craft. Despite a moderate force three north westerly swell and the suspects’ 225 horse-power engine, the squad managed to catch them after a hair-raising 30 minute chase that ended off Dingli cliffs in Malta.

All four suspects were detained until they were handed over to the police and arrested. When they searched the boat the police found several items of hunting equipment. The hunters had been seen ditching a number of items overboard during the chase, some of which were also later recovered.

The boat, the hunting equipment and all the items recovered from the sea are in the possession of the police and the men are currently being held for questioning.

Following the dispute with the EU and the recent court action against Malta, the season hasn’t been declared open and the hunters’ presence and their equipment was illegal.

The Hunting Federation failed to condemn the shooters. However, IAR’s Max Farrugia said he was pleased to see evidence that the government is stepping up enforcement against hunters both on land and at sea.

 

The main reason why certain hunters are labelled as ‘baddies,’ apart abviously from the fact that the perpetrators are breaking the law hunting protected species (which due to dwindling numbers are now rare), yeah these are indeed baddies as they do not form part of the regulated body of hunters which in Malta is respectably referred to as ‘The Federation of Hunting and Conservation Malta’  a member of the ‘International Federation of Associations for Hunting and Conservation in the EU’ otherwise known as FACE  http://www.face.eu/

 The Intro at the FACE website clearly states the priority –

In this section, discover how FACE promotes hunting according to the principles of rational and sustainable use of natural resources, for the purpose of wildlife conservation and management, as well as habitat protection, creation and restoration. Conservationists and hunters share the same areas, with often similar and reconcilable ultimate objectives. This new dialogue between hunters and conservationists directly benefits wildlife and their habitats.

Definitely the activities of hunting and trapping are in line with proper conservation.

However, those hunters who hunt for rare species (as might happen in Malta) should be arraigned and be subject to the legal penalties – which Maltese authorities do not hesitate to administer although indeed they do need further assistance in the form of funds and men power for them to efficiently carry out such an environmentally noble job!!!

So what is the GREAT controversy now ?

 SPRING HUNTING FOR TURTLE DOVE AND QUAIL ONLY!!

 http://www.huntinginmalta.org.mt/

Press Release issued by FKNK

6th March 2008

BIRDLIFE’S (MALTA) U-TURN

The Federation for Hunting and Conservation – Malta (FKNK) makes reference to the

various recent statements made by BirdLife (Malta) with regard to the current state of

affairs concerning Spring Hunting in Malta for two specific species.

FKNK reminds one and all of BirdLife’s hard and fast stand in 2003, which stand was

based on the negotiations held between the EU Commission and Malta and which

reflects the reality of the situation.

FKNK quotes salient parts of a press conference called by BirdLife on the 11 October

2003 as a follow-up to an open letter the society had sent to the Prime Minister on 26

September 2003. BirdLife said that “while we disagree outright with all the concessions

that the government won for hunters in its EU negotiations, the Society expects the

government at least to implement what it negotiated, namely:

1. to allow hunting in spring of turtle dove and quail ONLY

etc. The Press Conference entire report and FKNK’s comments can be viewed on

the FKNK WebSite at www.huntinginmalta.org.mt

FKNK expects no more today and despite feeling that it has been deprived

unnecessarily of various other hunting spheres, was willing to abide by such negotiations

and fully respect the provisions of the EU Directive 79/409/EEC known as the Birds

Directive. However the inconsistency and U-Turn in BirdLife’s approach to the subject

should be a clear indicator to one and all that the society has absolutely no interest in

educating and instilling knowledge on fauna but an obvious grudge against any and all

hunting practices. BirdLife’s change of strategy should be an eye-opener to all

authorities, even though at this late stage.

Finally FKNK relies on the statements made by the two main political parties that they

will continue to defend the court case filed against Malta by the EU Commission on the

issue of Spring Hunting even due to its wider implications and that they will continue to

utilise the assistance and expertise of its lawyers who have strong links with top

Environmental EU lawyers through its affiliation with the Federation of Associations for

Hunting and Conservation of the EU (FACE).

The Council

FKNK

 

While one (any one) would understand the disastrous implications of hunting Honey Buzzard, Owls, Osprey, Herons, Egrets etc etc all birds which dwindling numbers would jeopardise future generations of such species, the quail and the turtle dove are mostly hunted in France, Uk, Spain and Italy with a combined hunting population of 40,000,000 as opposed to the 15,000 Maltese hunters. Statistics from http://www.face.eu/fs-hunting.htm

Breeding Countries for the Common Quail http://www.sovon.nl/ebcc/eoa/default.asp?species=3700

The science behind the Quail issue – http://blx1.bto.org/birdfacts/refs/bib3700.htm

Quail Recipes – http://www.fooddownunder.com/cgi-bin/search.cgi?q=quail - Very very good and tasty!!

Quail served with tomato sauce – http://www.igougo.com/travelcontent/Journal.aspx?JournalID=43884

It might be suggested that hunting for Quail and Turtle Dove should be decreased in the large countries rather than in Malta which has such a terrible reputation abroad and is indeed insignificant when compared with the numbers of hunters on the European Continent.

The labeling of Malta as a number 1 bird killer is outrageous when considering the numbers provided above.

The following suggestions are forwarded by conservative on this E.U.tilitarian Commons blog -

1. An increase in funds and men power to Maltese authorities to keep up an efficient job – allocated funds for conservation allotted by the EU.

2. A campaign on continental Europe to improve the damaged reputation Malta has acquired due to the mother earth and green worshippers.

3. A proper conservation plan put forward by the regulated hunting group in Malta which would improve conservation prospects and its reputation.

A possible development of green tourism in the Winter months – proper walking trails and routes along the Dingli Cliffs, Merhla, Bahrija, Selmun areas and other country side walks along most of our Maltese ‘Rdum.’

This is essential firstly due to the fact that even if land is owned by private owners the roads and lanes can and should be used by citizens and nobody can write RTO in such lanes for they belong to the citizen. Secondly, safety must be ensured for the tourist and Maltese citizen to be able to pass safely through such lanes without being menaced by hunters, or wild unrestrained hunting or farming dogs. This is a particular problem for as continental europeans love going for walks the only places Malta has for such disposal is coveted greatly by hunters and becomes a ‘no-go’ area during hunting times. Tourism in Malta during the Winter months is weak therefore the suggestion of this post is to provide professional safe and clean cleared paths for such enjoyment. Professional marked walks and routes are seen in all European countries why should Malta not provide such. I suggest the local regulated hunting group to take this project up in collaboration with the local authorities. 

 4. Policing by the regulated hunting group reporting to the authorities when member and non-member hunters step over into the ‘baddy’ list.

 Marked routes along Tatry Mountain range

http://www.summitpost.org/images/original/144695.jpg

Walks are marked in colours denoting distance and time needed to travel

 

- no bears attack but in Malta farming dogs do!!

A suggested spot for countryside walks – the Dingli, Merhla, Mtahleb area – will it be safe for a Maltese citizen or a foreign tourist to pass through these public lanes after March 25th ??