No, the balance is not right

The ‘right balance’ in this equation is actually best represented by a ‘No’ vote in the referendum, not by a ‘Yes’. 

It’s strange how you can sometimes both agree and disagree with a proposition at the same time.

Take the most recent message to come out from the ‘Yes’ [to spring hunting] campaign, for instance. “Everyone can enjoy the countryside if the right balance is found”. 

Hmm. Well, it’s a little difficult to actually disagree with that, isn’t it? By definition, striking the ‘right balance’ would result in everybody benefitting equally from any given situation. So of course we can all agree that everybody would be happy with the ‘right balance’ in place. Bit of a foregone conclusion, really.

The odd thing, however, is that while the ‘Yes’ campaign is perfectly correct in its argument, it somehow managed to draw the most manifestly incorrect conclusion imaginable from it. Yes, this is about balance. But the ‘right balance’ in this equation is actually best represented by a ‘No’ vote in the referendum, not by a ‘Yes’. 

This places a finger very squarely on the entire dilemma at the core of this referendum process. The truth is that no balance has ever been struck at all when it comes to the issue of spring hunting in Malta. And it is precisely because the present situation is so absurdly lopsided that a decision was taken to go for a referendum in the first place.

The first and most pivotal ‘balance’ to be affected by this referendum concerns the equilibrium of nature, which we toy with at our own risk. But it is by no means the only one.

At face value, the broader question people will go to the polls to answer concerns whether or not to permit hunting in spring. But the actual referendum question itself, as printed on the ballot paper, concerns whether we agree or not with a specific article of law that permits Malta to derogate from the European Wild Birds Directive.

In practical terms, the effect of the nation’s collective answer will be the same – i.e., ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to the opening of a spring hunting season in Malta. And yet the two questions are not directly interchangeable. One presupposes the application of a conservation principle which is rooted in the balance of nature, and which exists independently of this particular issue. The other involves only a political decision to enact a particular law.

For many people voting in the ‘No’ camp, it is the principle that matters, not the actual species or the specific mechanics of the framework directive. The main objection to spring hunting is that it violates a time-honoured code of conduct that was originally devised to conserve the natural equilibrium. And it is an ancient, primordial code, too. How else to explain the universality of global regulations that prohibit hunting during the breeding season? 

One doesn’t need to be an anthropologist to perceive that the original reason had much to do with the survival of humanity itself. Man spent around 99% of his entire time on this planet depending almost exclusively on the hunter-gatherer lifestyle for survival. He clearly recognised the necessity of maintaining ‘the right balance’ from a very early stage in his development. 

Our earliest ancestors – the real experts on hunting, I would assume – therefore understood that which seems to elude the grasp of so many hunting lobbyists today. Killing birds during the breeding season is manifestly unsustainable. It directly turns the old maxim ‘a bird in the hand’ on its head: two birds in a bush will make baby birds, if left to their own devices. A bird in the hand, however, will only make for fewer birds next year.

In one aspect, however, the situation has changed since the elder days. Today, the world human population exceeds 7 billion. We are not exactly in much danger of extinction ourselves: certainly, not from starvation due to a lack of animals to hunt. But the same cannot be said for the hunted animals. Humans may have released themselves from the natural weal many centuries ago; but for birds and beasts – and aye, for turtle dove and quail – the stakes are somewhat higher. 

Birds in particular face much higher extinction risks than ever before. Unsustainable hunting has in fact already directly resulted in recent mass-extinctions on a global level. The dodo and the passenger pigeon may be the most iconic examples, but there were others: the great auk, the Carolina parakeet, etc. And there are other more ‘recent’ dangers to contend with, such as climate change, industrial pesticides and habitat destruction, alongside the traditional threats posed by disease, drought and famine. 

Turtle dove and quail in particular are classified as ‘in decline’ all over Europe. Sure, there may be several million still alive today… but European populations have dwindled by 70% in the last 50 years, and continue to decline by around 3%. Maltese hunters repeatedly claim that this decline cannot be directly attributed to their own hobby. In global terms they may well have a point: even if grossly under-reported, the actual figures taken in Malta in spring are not sufficient to pose a direct extinction threat. 

But at the micro-level, this claim is demonstrably false. Hunting in Malta has had a direct, undeniable impact on resident species over the years. There have been past records of both turtle dove and quail either breeding or attempting to breed in Malta. Other species such as the kestrel or barn owl were effectively wiped out altogether.

In this respect, the balance of nature has already been severely distorted. And the main reason involves ‘imbalances’ of another nature. Viewed as a playing field, Malta’s hunting landscape in its entirety is itself out of tilt. The exact figure of licensed hunters has varied over the years, but averages out at roughly 12,000. That, of course, does not include unlicensed hunters. There is quite simply no other country in Europe that has an even remotely comparable ratio of hunters per square kilometre to that of Malta. Yet over the years we have seen ever-increasing numbers of hunting licences given out, and the eligible age was even lowered from 21 to 18. (You know, just to make sure that the people we entrust with guns are as responsible and mature as possible…)

Already the imbalance is palpable… and I haven’t even touched on the issue of spring hunting yet. With an ever-growing hunting population and an ever-shrinking countryside, the odds are already severely stacked against birds as they migrate in autumn (a season which, in hunting terms, actually stretches from early September to late January… trespassing on parts of both summer and winter.) But that those birds must face the same disproportionate odds not once, but TWICE – on the only two times they actually migrate over Malta – that is to stretch the imbalance to such a precarious degree that the entire structure can only come crashing down about our ears. 

As indeed it already has… with the result that Malta’s resident breeding avifauna has been effectively decimated in the past 70 years.

This in turn points towards another underlying imbalance. For the past 20 of those 70 years, both Malta’s main political parties have been committed (in some cases literally) to legislate ‘in favour of the hunters’. Those very words were used by the Fenech Adami administration before the 1998 election. Labour had made similar promises before, and both parties have lived up to identical commitments ever since. 

Once again, the balance of political firepower has for years been distorted. Specifically on the issue of spring hunting, successive governments have simply ignored a sizeable sector of the wider population that opposes this practice… the ones who have long argued that Malta’s hunting situation is a direct violation of both conservation principles and common sense… and instead cosied up to a single-interest (and severely single-minded) lobby-group to the exclusion of all other concerns. 

There has been no alternation of any kind to this pattern. The prime minister could change from Eddie Fenech Adami to Alfred Sant to Lawrence Gonzi to Joseph Muscat, yet Malta’s policy on this issue has always remained exactly the same: to resolutely defend, come hell or high water, an unbalanced, unorthodox and utterly unsustainable deal. 

Where, therefore, has ‘the right balance’ ever been struck in this arrangement? How is everyone supposed to benefit equally, when the deck of cards has always been so blatantly rigged in favour of one party and against the other?

Still: this doesn’t change the fact that, on paper, the ‘yes’ campaign’s argument is essentially correct. Everybody would benefit with the right balance in place. And the right balance, in this instance, is to give migrating birds a fighting chance for survival on the more critical of their two migratory passages over this country. 

This would benefit the birds, which might actually get an opportunity to replenish their dwindling numbers each year. It would benefit those who respect the balance of nature, and who (not unreasonably) expect our country to honour a code of conduct that has roots in the earliest forms of human civilisation. And it would ultimately benefit the hunters themselves, too. They would still get a good five months a year in which to shoot birds, without unduly distorting the balance of nature.

That is the ‘right balance’ many of us want to see in place in the country. And it is precisely to achieve that balance that many of us will vote ‘No’ in the spring hunting referendum.