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This newspaper enthusiastically welcomes the news that government has finally decided to close the controversial spring hunting season.
The decision is not only a long overdue step in favour of bird conservation both in Malta and abroad; it is also good for our international image, good for tourism, good for the people’s right to enjoy access to the countryside without feeling intimidated or threatened… it is, quite simply, a good decision.
Naturally, the hunters will argue otherwise, but then again they have only themselves to blame. When government opened the hunting season on April 10, the policy was loud and clear: zero tolerance for shooting protected birds. Hunters chose to ignore this warning, clearly banking on government to persist in its previous policy of barking without biting. On this occasion, however, the hunters were proved wrong.
But while the official reason for the announcement involves the massacre this week of several protected honey buzzards, the timing – i.e., the day after the brutal destruction of thousands of trees in Ghadira bay – leaves one in little doubt as to the unofficial motives. Government, it seems, has finally decided to take action in view of the hunters’ repeated excesses: from illegal hunting, to thuggery during protests, to unacceptable acts of vandalism, desecration and intimidation. And about time, too.
Neither is it a coincidence that government has strategically taken this decision on the eve of a national election. Evidently, it has finally dawned on the Nationalist Party’s revamped strategy group that while there are no votes to be gained by appeasing an insatiable and unreasonable hunting lobby, there are plenty to lose from the substantial number of green leaning Nationalists who were sickened by the ongoing slaughter in spring.
This unexpected turn of events has in fact dispelled a number of myths about hunting in Malta: not least, the widely exaggerated perception of the hunting lobby as a political force to be reckoned with. For years, hunters have held the authorities to ransom. Their strongest supporters have included certain Cabinet members, as well as a number of backbenchers, who together managed to convince the Prime Minister that antagonising the hunters’ lobby would cost votes and electoral support. As a result, government effectively marginalised the green lobby within its own ranks, thus falling between two electoral stools. This inauspicious state of affairs gave credence to the popular view that government is strong with the weak and weak with the strong.
Clearly, however, we are witnessing a tactical change within government’s entire modus operandi on the issue. Apart from shifting the emphasis onto the greener vote, government’s stated reasons also suggest that the scales have fallen from its eyes on another issue: the extent of illegal hunting in this country.
For the last few years, illegal hunting has been perceived as the preserve of only a handful of unruly members in an otherwise law-abiding community. This, at any rate, is the version the hunters’ federation would have us believe. But in the past weeks, the police have been literally inundated with reports of protected birds shot, injured and killed: far too many to be attributed to a small minority alone. In this respect, the government appears to have finally removed its blinkers, and is seeing the situation for what it is, and has been for years: a barbaric free-for-all.
But on a sobering note, government’s brave decision this week will ultimately prove ineffectual unless accompanied by a vigorous commitment to beef up the severely understaffed Administrative Law Enforcement unit, which currently stands at an unimpressive 29 members: patently insufficient to patrol and monitor the entire archipelago.
On another level, past experience teaches us that decision such as this would be better accompanied by serious measures to protect out national monuments from further vandalism. Events of the mid-1990s, when temples such as Hagar Qim, Mnajdra and Borg in-Nadur were spray-painted with pro-hunting slogans, must on no account be allowed to repeat themselves.
But for the moment, let us be grateful for the not-so-small mercy that spring hunting has been laid to rest, at least for this year. After all, this newspaper has long argued that conviction politics involves doing what is right, and not just what is expedient. We are happy to note that finally, common sense seems to be prevailing. |
