Yes, together spring hunting is possible, Gonzi tells hunters
Raphael Vassallo
Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi has told hunters that a future derogation for spring hunting is now possible in the light of last month’s European Court ruling: though he stopped short of committing his government to opening the season next April.
Dr Gonzi’s interpretation – aired during a meeting with representatives of two hunter’s associations in Castille on Monday – sheds further doubts on a contentious court ruling which has been hailed as a “victory” by both the pro- and anti-spring hunting lobbies.
For the same reason, the Prime Minister’s vague indication of a possible future derogation is likely to ruffle feathers among the many who campaigned last year (including BirdLife Malta, but also key exponents of Malta’s tourism industry) for the permanent abolition of spring hunting.
Writing in The Times last week, BirdLife Malta executive director Tolga Temuge emphatically denied that the European Court had paved the way to a derogation on spring hunting, and accused the hunting lobby of “raising false hopes among the hunting community to cover the defeat they faced in Brussels.”
“They are now taking a few sentences from a 14-page verdict on which to base the claim that the ECJ decision allows the government to allow spring hunting in future,” Temuge wrote. “The federation is completely ignoring the rest of the document and, most importantly, its conclusion.”
However, on Monday the Prime Minister gave representatives the Federation of Hunters’ and Trappers’ Association (FKNK) and the St Hubert Hunters’ Association a very different impression.
St Huberts’ Association secretary Mark Mifsud Bonnici told this newspaper that the meeting was “positive”, but that it is still too early to guarantee a derogation for next year’s spring hunting season.
“There is not very much to report, but the Prime Minister acknowledged that some form of limited hunting may take place in spring after the European Court judgement,” he said.
During the same meeting, both FKNK and St Huberts Hunters are understood to have submitted their own, separate proposals on how to go about applying this derogation. Mifsud Bonnici was reluctant to go into any detail, though he hinted that the basic elements of the St Hubert proposals include a shorter season and stricter limits on bag counts.
However, the paucity of local enforcement of hunting regulations is likely to prove the biggest bone of contention. Any future derogation (if such derogation is even possible to begin with) would depend heavily on “strict supervision” and law enforcement. But with a mere 28 officers to monitor the activities of 14,000 licensed hunters, the police’s Administrative Law Enforcement agency (ALE) is evidently understaffed for the job at hand.
Ironically, both pro- and anti-hunting agree on at least this one point: that the ALE needs to be beefed up with more manpower and better resources to a form a Wildlife Crime Unit. To date, however, there has been no indication of any plans to increase the number of ALE officers from the present complement of 28, and this in turn can only make the possibility of a derogation all the more remote.
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