With public areas reserved for private use, walking in the countryside may not be as safe as many might think. DAVID DARMANIN outlines how to defend your basic right to enjoy the countryside, when shotguns are brandished in your face
Enjoying the countryside may very well be one of the few leisure activities left where trekkers, ramblers and birdwatchers are not required to pay entrance fees. And yet, abusive tactics employed by those who claim rights on public land are hindering the public from enjoying the limited natural spots Malta offers.
The Maltese countryside is dotted with areas marked ‘private’, ‘no entry’, or ‘RTO’ – short for ‘riservato’ (Italian for ‘reserved’). But how do we know whether the spray on the rubble wall has not been painted without the blessing of the Lands Department?
In reality, we don’t, and in some cases not even the Lands Department will be in a position to tell us. Conservation NGO Birdlife Malta, for instance, has been pressing the department to provide it with a map outlining those areas in Mizieb that are public, those that are private and those that are rented out by government to the private sector – but to no avail.
The story of Mizieb The Mizieb afforestation project, situated between Mellieha and St Paul’s Bay, started in the late 1950s, when the Israeli government donated approximately 10,000 trees (mostly Aleppo Pine, Olive and Juniper) to Malta, then under Dom Mintoff’s Labour government. Two sites were chosen in the north for these afforestation purposes – Mizieb and l-Ahrax, near Armier. In Mizieb, dynamite was used to create cracks in the bedrock to allow the tree roots to gain purchase.
More trees were planted in the Mizieb area in the early 1970s, and many NGOs (including Men of the Trees, 4Ts and Malta Ornithological Society - today BirdLife Malta) were also involved in these tree-planting projects. The site was also used for a scientific bird ringing project and nature walks.
“In a ploy to gain votes for an upcoming election, in 1986 government handed Mizieb over to the Hunters Association (at the time called ‘Ghaqda Kaccaturi u Nassaba’), for use as hunting areas,” Birdlife Malta Conservation Manager Andre Raine said.
“However, as far as BirdLife Malta can ascertain, there is no official written agreement between the hunting federations and the Maltese government for Mizieb, nor any existing management plans,” he said. Birdlife claims that there are about 200 structures built illegally in Mizieb.
“In 2008, the police issued a licence for trapping on public land in Mizieb,” Birdlife Malta Executive Director Tolga Temuge said. “This means that the police is giving permits for illegal trapping on a Natura 2000 site on public land, to people who have no legal title to it, and within an illegal development.”
Since 2008, Birdlife has also been complaining to the Lands Department over tens of illegal structures used for trapping at Ramla tat-Torri and Rdum tal-Madonna in Mellieha.
“We not talking of the traditional ‘dura’ here,” Temuge said. “These are actual developments, concrete structures.”
The organisation has compiled a detailed report over the structures and had them sent to the department last November, but no reply was forthcoming.
Safety first Hunting and trapping aside, there is little one can do to ascertain that countryside areas that are meant to be enjoyed by the public will not turn into ‘RTO’ sites overnight.
To protect trekkers, the Ramblers Association of Malta (RAM) takes precautions.
“We help the MTA with the publication of a series of booklets that outline safe treks,” RAM’s outgoing President Lino Bugeja said. The booklets, available at tourist offices and bookshops also feature detailed information on historical sites which “the Maltese countryside is dotted with”.
Bugeja clarified that the upcoming MEPA reform will not include issues related to rights of passage in the countryside, as “the issue falls solely within the remit of the Lands Department, not MEPA”.
Bugeja has been pushing on rights of passage for years now. In 1995, he started a campaign in favour of the publication of a definitive map of Malta that clearly outlines areas that can be freely accessed by the public – and those which cannot. Nothing much has come out of the initiative so far, although Bugeja is now hopeful “as with Jason Azzopardi responsible for Lands, we feel that we have a shoulder to cry on”.
But Bugeja, who turned 80 this week, is cautiously optimistic and does not expect any revolution to happen overnight.
“We appreciate that you cannot unscramble a scrambled egg, so I think there is a more of a realistic possibility for us to start slowly – say, with a map that covers the Maltese wilderness, or parts of it,” he said. “We are also expecting the countryside and coastal zones to be opened, and this can only be done by means of a parliamentary bill or a white paper.”
Meanwhile, the National Commission for Sustainable Development has already drafted a paper outlining a strategy in the regard.
“As we stand, whenever we organise a schedule of walks – we first go ourselves to see which areas are safe to walk in and which are not,” he said. “But you can never be sure. Even in safe areas, they sometimes release dogs or fire warning shots in the air to scare us off.”
Bugeja, who has been going on countryside walks since the end of the Second World War, said that by now he knows “which part of the Maltese countryside are public and which are not,” but still, he often comes across areas in which certain individuals claim ownership.
“In a particular area, a man claimed ownership of an area which had an ADT sign, a telephone box and a MaltaPost letter box,” he said.
Such situations are not uncommon, and neither are incidents of trekkers being confronted by abusers of public land.
Bugeja is also pushing for a model adopted by various other EU countries whereby those countryside areas marked as “private” by the owner do not hold any legal bearing unless an official and clearly visible notice issued by the competent authorities is affixed at the entrance of such sites.
The ‘rubber jollies’ Back to Birdlife, Raine recalls an incident which was caught on camera and eventually uploaded onto the internet, wherein bird watchers stood on a vantage point in a public area. In a bid to chase them off, a bully referred to the birdwatchers as “rubber jollies” amid the hurling of other disparaging remarks.
“The footage had made a hit on Youtube, but whereas some may think that this may have been a one-off incident, it is a simple fact of life that whenever we organise countryside events – especially during Raptor Camp and Spring Watch (where we have guests from abroad over) – people are screamed at or treated aggressively simply for being on public land,” Raine said.
Temuge added that “most people who are kicked out of public land are intimidated, and they leave.”
But there have been other times when Birdlife members did not budge.
“One time in Mtahleb for instance, we were approached by a hunter who, holding a gun, told us that the land we were on was privately owned. We were standing at a vantage point on the side of a public road, so we first asked him whose land it was and he refused to answer, so we pointed him to a sign affixed by the ADT on the same road. Incredibly, he kept insisting that the sign was put up by the private owner of the road. So at that point, we called the Administrative Law Enforcement (ALE) section of the police and they came within 15 minutes. We probably had the chance of going down this route because we knew that the police are very receptive towards us. I do not know if they would have been as efficient with ordinary citizens.”
Temuge said that hunting is not the only reason why people can push you out of public land. “The best thing to do if you are asked to leave an area which is not properly marked as private, or when you are not sure whom it belongs to, is to ask for some sort of evidence,” he said.
“In some other EU countries, unless it’s your garden – the public has a full right to trespass if it’s in the countryside. I do not know if it works the same way in Malta. Ultimately though, if you own land and for whatever reason you do not want people to trespass – it is within your responsibility to mark it properly, because you cannot expect people to know which land is public and which is private. Unless you put signs to indicate that people should not go in – then it means that you do not find with people trespassing.”
Where MEPA comes in In a bid to curb abusive appropriation of public land, the Malta Environment and Planning Authority has over the years issued enforcement orders on illegal structures used for trapping. Raine however, claims that some of the culprits who developed these sites have ignored MEPA’s decision altogether and still carried on with the abuse.
A site close to Nadur Tower in the limits of Rabat (Malta) had been issued with an enforcement notice due to it having been built illegally.
Raine describes the structure as “a very large Golden Plover trapping site that can be easily seen from Nadur Tower.”
In November last year, when the enforcement notice had already been issued, “the site was still active with multiple clap nets, Golden Plover decoys and a very loud illegal speaker system broadcasting electronic bird calls.”
A similar case involving a finch trapping site at Qammiegh was noticed by Birdlife.
“I originally contacted MEPA about this on 20 December 2007,” Raine said. In February 2008, Raine received an email from the authority saying that an enforcement order on the site had been issued.
“I revisited the site in autumn of last year, two years on from the original report, and found that not only was it still there, but the building had been added to, and there was trapping paraphernalia like nets and springs set up on site – showing that it had been used illegally to trap finches this year,” he said.
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