The hunters’ lobby has written to the Prime Minister complaining of alleged discrimination, for outlawing hunting inside Xaghra l-Hamra’s Majjistral national park.
The secretary-general of the Federazzjoni Kaccaturi Nassaba Konservazzjonisti (FKNK), Lino Farrugia, said hunters and trappers were not being allowed to hunt inside the park. “While it is the practice in other European countries to involve all parties connected to land use, in Malta our rights are being curtailed,” Farrugia said.
Farrugia added that it was minister Pullicino who advised the FKNK to meet the chairman of the board of the Majjistral Park. The FKNK first made its request in April, in order to involve hunters as land users and stakeholders.
The FKNK met Pullicino and the chairman of the Majjistral Park in September.
“We then learnt, in the most arrogant and unilateral of manners, that the chairman, Ian Castaldi Paris, had taken a decision on hunting in the park. This was despite our schedule meeting for the 18 September,” Farrugia said.
“We believe government will use this person and such an occasion, as a precedent. We will not let this discrimination stand, because we believe we will regain the rights we had that were unjustly taken away from us in these last six years.”
Hunting in the Majjistral Pak will not be practicable after 9am. When the Majjistral Park was set up in the Xagħra l-Ħamra area in March, the FKNK met with Minister George Pullicino and subsequently the park’s chairman Ian Castaldi-Paris and its secretary Mark C. Mifsud. It was agreed that the federation would call all the hunters and trappers frequenting the area so that these could be organised under an organising committee, thus contributing towards the area’s management and enhancing the FKNK’s “self-regulation” system.
The federation has been told that since the area is a designated Natura 2000 site, it was incompatible with hunting and trapping.
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