Hunting ban precedes Vella grilling on hunting credentials

The hunting ban announced by Prime Minister Joseph Muscat on Saturday has completely overruled the Ornis Committee, the body charged with recommending the opening dates for hunting, which had proposed the opening of the autumn hunting season and the lifting of the September 3pm curfew.

It vindicated accusations that the police’s Administrative Law Enforcement unit could not prevent hunters from breaking the law due to several transfers made before the start of the hunting season.

Muscat was informed by the pro-hunting junior minister Roderick Galdes, that he could no longer guarantee that hunters’ illegalities would be stopped.

That came after the slaughter of White Storks, an elegant large bird associated with parental devotion and good luck, the killing of which is environmental sacrilege in European society.

Muscat was worried that the week before the Brussels hearing of commissioner-designate Karmenu Vella, who has yet to be grilled by MEPs on his credentials for the post of Environment Commissioner, the massacre of protected birds in Malta would embarrass the Maltese nominee and rekindle attention about Malta’s appalling record of illegal hunting of protected species.

Vella has been surprisingly entrusted with the environment portfolio, apart from maritime and fisheries, by Commission president Jean Claude Juncker.

Most of the questions which Karmenu Vella, former tourism minister, is bound to have to answer will focus on the Birds Directive. The surprising decision to ban hunting in Malta until 10 October should go some way to placate some of Malta’s harshest critics.

Muscat has been told that most of the hunters creating problems are ‘criminals’ interested in shooting birds for profitable taxidermy. A stuffed White Stork could fetch over €7,000 on the black market, a police source told MaltaToday. However the extent of illegal hunting appears to go beyond the racket of selling birds, whose trade involves dozens of illegal taxidermists. Many hunters simply enjoy shooting and keeping stuffed birds as trophies.

The suspension of the hunting season, if respected, will save the lives of countless protected birds of prey, including the rare and endangered Peregrine Falcon and the White and Black Storks that fly south to Africa.

However it raises the question whether the Ornis committee headed by anthropologist Mark Anthony Sammut, has been rendered redundant. With prime ministerial intervention, the role of the committee, already heavily criticised for being pro-hunting, is in question.