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Matthew Vella
Discussions on the transposition of the Birds Directive that is expected to curtail the seasons for finch trapping and hunting at sea, are still ongoing a mere ten days before the season was expected to close on 31 January.
Urged by Europe’s Commissioner for the environment Stavros Dimas to get Maltese legislation in line with EU law, Environment Minister George Pullicino’s draft amendments first published in September have still not come into force.
The draft laws will mean the trapping season, which at present runs from 1 October to 10 April, will have to close on 31 January. Hunting and sea, which usually runs to the last day of February, will also have to stop by 31 January.
The proposals also lay down that boats used for hunting at sea can only have engines which run at a maximum speed of 18 kilometres an hour.
In submissions to the draft regulations, environmentalists have questioned the wording in a proposed article which automatically assumes a derogation from the ban on spring hunting in the Birds Directive.
A ministry spokesperson said that since the regulations are still in draft format they have yet to be transposed into law, and the European Commission has no reason to comment on anything that is not yet legally binding.
Dimas delivered a strong message to Minister George Pullicino in a letter on 13 June, where he reminded the minister that bird trapping sites and bird trappers will be no more after 2008, and that Malta still lagged behind in the full transposition of EU hunting laws.
The derogation to allow Malta continue hunting for turtle dove and quail in spring depends on whether the Commission will be satisfied with Malta’s conviction that its hunting numbers will remain sustainable.
The government report presented to the Commission to justify the spring hunting derogation in November was met with scepticism. According to a Commission spokesperson, the EU remains unconvinced of the figures of shot birds as communicated by the government.
“If only 10,000 birds are being shot, the Maltese must be really bad shooters,” a spokesperson for Dimas said in November.
mvella@mediatoday.com.mt
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