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Some years ago my sister-in-law went to Malta for her holidays. She was not aware of the hunting scenario in Malta and the poor respect for nature protection and the general image that this projects across Europe and beyond. Now she knows she’s never going to repeat that holiday. Nor me. Or my family. And it’s a pity but I’m tired of hearing of Malta lack of respect to nature conservation, the last case being Ta’ Cenc’s lack of protection.
I work in the field of seabird protection in Catalonia, Spain, so I’m concerned with the safeguarding of that place. Besides, I manage a small but internationally important wetland close to Barcelona airport which receives an increasing number of foreign tourists and local public as well. Spain is, like Malta, a Mediterranean country where hunting is widespread (but in our case I have to say decreasing) and where here environmental protection and nature respect has grown fast in the last 20 years. I remember having heard and experienced dark stories in the early eighties on hunters shooting everything. I myself was shot in those years! But if I’m right we’re now in 2001, XXI century, and as long as cannibalism or inquisition practices are no longer in use, the unlimited hunt of everything that flies should no longer be in application in Europe. Your birds in Malta (if there’s anyone left) are ‘our’ migrant birds too. Your shearwaters are ours. And that is proven through satellite-tracking techniques. So please, leave them alone or at least apply severe and strict rules as elsewhere. And protect valuable areas such as Ta’ Cenc.
Don’t do that and don’t worry: there are many other nice sites in the Mediterranean, like Spanish islands for example, where tourists increasingly go and enjoy their natural parks and reserves where birdlife is (still) rich and plenty. In the meantime, as we say, you’re throwing rocks on your own ceiling. Hotel owners in the Balearics are certainly very happy with your policy. We biologists are not.
Ricard Gutiérrez
Barcelona, Spain
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