FKNK – get your act together

FKNK can stamp their feet and throw their toys out of the pram as much as they please, however the fact remains that every time a hunting season comes along, its members act like it's a shooting free-for-all. All their protestations about foreign interference and conspiracy theories ring hollow, unlike the shots of their members, which can be heard loud and clear all over the Maltese countryside.

I was not one of those who had strong feelings about the hunting debacle. In fact I have often commented in my column about the fact that hunters were taken for a ride during the EU referendum campaign and that they deserved some sympathy for that. However my attitude changed somewhat last autumn, when a wounded marsh harrier fell to the ground in my garden, just a few feet away from my living room door.

I witnessed first-hand the wanton destruction of a lovely creature which is supposedly protected. As I raced to the BirdLife office in Ta'Xbiex, hoping against hope that they would be able to save it, I was furious. That evening there were reports on a number of online news portals about the bird, and inevitably, an army of trolls flooded the comment boards to claim that this was a false report and that BirdLife were making it up. When I replied and stated that I was the one who had found the bird in question, that I was not a member of BirdLife and had never been involved in the battle against hunting, some people actually responded that it was likely that BirdLife people had shot the bird close to my house so I would find it and report it! Clearly the hunting posse and their followers live in a twisted never-never land where fiction becomes truth and vice versa.

Seeing as I know for a fact that the bird really was shot and that it died a few days later, I had confirmation, if any was needed, that all the times FKNK tried to shed doubt on BirdLife's claims about hunting abuse, they were speaking out of their nether regions.

Hunters in Malta are organised, and they are well aware that they are breaking the law. In the valley where I live I often see groups of young men with walkie-talkies and guns monitoring the two entrances to the valley. They stand guard and notify their hunting buddies, who are busy shooting anything that flies over the valley, whenever an unidentified car approaches. That gives the hunters time to hide their guns and any trace of illegal hunting.

It has got to the point where occasionally these men actually slow down my car by standing in the middle of the road and peering into the back (I have tinted windows) to see if I am harbouring any undesirables. Whenever this happens I am always tempted to get into an argument with them, however the fact is that it would not be very wise to get involved in a discussion with a man with a gun.

This is the reality of what is happening in the Maltese countryside, and the sooner FKNK admit it and join the fight to rein in the cowboys the better. However, judging by the recent farce relating to Edwin Vella, an FKNK official (according to FKNK he is a district committee executive) who was photographed hunting in the Foresta 2000 bird sanctuary in Mellieha, the association of "conservationists" has absolutely no intention of making good on their claims that they will not tolerate abuse.

The result is that FKNK and hunters in general are sinking to new lows in public opinion. Every season we think that it cannot get any worst, but we are then unpleasantly surprised when it actually does. This year we were regaled with stories of hooded hunters in nature reserves, hundreds of shots recorded during the so-called "hunting curfew", scores of live protected birds seized by the police, many more dead protected birds found rotting in fields, dozens of illegal electronic decoy devices and hundreds of metres worth of illegal mist nets and ground nets, which are used to trap quail.

I have given up on hunters controlling their urge to kill anything that flies. They clearly are not capable of self-regulation, and at this stage there are only two options available to the government. The first is to invest heavily in policing our countryside, expanding the ALE team considerably and purchasing drones and other "espionage" equipment to help the good guys monitor and control the bad guys. The second is to ban hunting - full stop.