It’s getting better all the time…

“Blessed are they who expect nothing, for in nothing shall they be disappointed.”

It’s one of those random quotes you get thrown at you on Facebook these days, usually attributed to Albert Einstein or Mark Twain. Not sure whose this one was originally… except that it’s not one of the original Eight Beatitudes (I checked).

They are undeniably wise words, however. Particularly useful if you’re the type who religiously buys lottery tickets, for instance, or speculates on the Stock Exchange.

But there is a small snag. If you have no expectations of any kind, there can be no possible improvement of any kind to look forward to either. It’s just another way of condemning yourself to any given situation for all eternity. And I suppose that’s absolutely fine, if you’re happy with the situation in question. But if you’re not – and if the situation also affects other people apart from yourself – then there’s nothing ‘blessed’ about living a life of low expectation at all.

I was reminded of this truism rather unexpectedly this weekend. As you may have noticed, the autumn hunting season was briefly suspended between 21 September and last Saturday, ostensibly to prevent a massacre of protected birds of the kind we have routinely seen in this country every autumn.

Needless to say there may have been other less immediately visible reasons for the decision… but in any case, the hunters were understandably irate; and apart from the usual grumbling about ‘collective punishment’, one of their arguments revolved about the alleged ‘improvement’ to the illegal hunting season in recent years.

This year, we are told, one man was arraigned and eventually fined for shooting a protected bird, a stork. And we are now presented with this as ‘proof’ that the revised hunting regulations are achieving their objective – i.e., to bring illegalities under control – so there was no need to resort to such ‘draconian measures’ in the first place.

It’s the sort of argument you’d expect to hear from the hunters… but this time we also got it from the chairman of the Ornis Committee, Prof. Mark Anthony Falzon, whose task was specifically to draw up hunting regulations and restrictions for each season.

“The Prime Minister was wrong to suspend the autumn hunting season,” he wrote on Sunday: and apart from the usual arguments regarding collective injustice, etc., I was struck by the repeated claim that the situation is (not unlike a Beatles song), ‘getting better all the time’.

“My impression,” Falzon at one point states, “is that things this autumn were much the same like previous years. In sum, an average season peppered with reports of injured and dead protected birds… Ten years ago I'd have said 'swamped' rather than 'peppered'. But that was then and now is now, thanks to political will, the work of the police, surveillance by BirdLife and CABS, and the goodwill of hunters broadly speaking.”

He sees improvement in law enforcement, too. “True, there was the stork. But the person who shot it was apprehended and got what he deserved in no time. If anything, the stork incident showed that the police were coping well enough…”

Hence the quote with which I opened this article. If that is the extent of the Ornis Committee’s expectations for a satisfactory hunting season, I shudder to think how it would rate a disastrous one. So one man gets caught shooting one bird… and that’s considered a landmark law enforcement achievement? And are we to understand that, so long as the overall situation remains technically the same as last year – when there were widespread reports of illegal shooting throughout the season – and the year before, and the year before that… well, that’s the most we should be entitled to expect? We should we be grateful just for the fact (if it even is a fact) that things are not getting any worse?

The trouble, of course, is that they’re not getting any better. In Falzon’s view, the fact that this season was “much the same as in previous years” is actually a good thing. As for the rest of us out here – the ones who want to see a real improvement in standards, not just of law enforcement but also in our entire culture of interaction with wildlife – oh, we’re the ones who are being overly ambitious, in our hopes that we might one day evolve beyond the “If It Flies It Dies” paradigm.

Meanwhile, Falzon’s (and the hunters’) vague claims of ‘improvements’ over 10 years ago are not much to rest one’s laurels on, either. Ten years ago was when we joined the EU. Effectively, then, what this argument means is that while standards of law enforcement may have improved slightly since pre-accession days – when there was hardly any enforcement at all – they have remained stuck at the same level ever since.

In a sense, you can argue that they have actually deteriorated. For while the number of reported illegalities may be comparable to last year’s statistics, the penalties for illegal shooting had been increased five-fold for this season. OK, perhaps it would have been slightly unrealistic to expect a five-fold decrease in reported illegalities. But on the other hand… no improvement at all? What does this tell us about the success rate of dramatically raising the penalties as a deterrent to illegal shooting? And what options, short of ‘radical and draconian’ measures, is one left with… when, by Falzon’s admission, even higher penalties failed to make any noticeable difference?

Nor was it just the penalties that were revised. This year, the Ornis Committee also revoked a 3pm curfew originally intended to protect migratory birds of prey from trophy hunters. The government’s decision to abruptly halt the season came the day after reports that two marsh harriers had been shot, on top of a video of an injured honey buzzard over Buskett. And the timing of the ban – late September to early October – indicates that it was intended primarily to protect birds of prey: i.e., the same category of migratory birds that had been exposed to greater risk thanks to decisions taken by the Ornis Committee.

In other words, it was actually the failure of Falzon’s own committee to live up to its remit that effectively forced the government to step in and take those extreme measures he now complains about.

Ultimately, however, the biggest disappointment is that we are still basing this entire discussion on impressions, idle fancies and suppositions. Mark Anthony Falzon is quite right, for instance, to insist that a decision of this magnitude should have been accompanied by a thorough breakdown of the facts and figures pertaining to illegal shooting in September. He is also perfectly justified in not wanting to “just take the prime minister’s word for it”.

“Question is, should we just believe him?” Falzon asked, with regard to Joseph Muscat’s impression that the hunting situation has become uncontrollable. And here I find myself in full agreement with the Ornis chairman. Heck, no. Given a choice between wild speculation and a solid argument based on facts and figures, I’d much rather go with the latter, thank you very much.

But then again, what’s good for the stork is good for the honey buzzard. If it is unacceptable for a government to base its hunting decisions on speculation instead of hard data… how does it suddenly become acceptable for the Ornis Committee chairman to base his own arguments on a personal impression that, ‘oh, come on, it’s not as bad as all that’?

Should we just believe Prof. Falzon’s impression? The answer is the same. Heck, no. And it shouldn’t be too hard to verify such claims, either. As Falzon himself puts it: “the data does exist. The police keep detailed and comparative records of reports and incidents and so do BirdLife, CABS and the government's own Wild Birds Regulation Unit.”

Interestingly enough, this is precisely the sort of information that is made available to the Ornis Committee each year. It forms – or is supposed to form – the bedrock upon which hunting regulations are built. Yet when it comes to making a scientific observation regarding whether, and to what extent, the local hunting situation has improved, Falzon prefers to base himself on his own vague impressions based on the odd press report here and there.

Clearly, this is not a serious way to draw up a policy to govern hunting. What emerges at various levels from Falzon’s own argument is that the Ornis Committee simply lacks the motivation, vision and even ambition to fulfil its remit, and regulate the hunting issue in a way that is satisfactory to all parties.

Small wonder, then, that in the end it would find itself so blatantly bypassed, by a government decision aimed at limiting the damage caused by Ornis’ own disastrous policies and decisions.