News | Sunday, 21 February 2010

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Malta promises stricter enforcement of hunting laws, with fewer resources

BirdLife accuses government of downsizing MEPA enforcement directorate and not beefing up police Administrative Law Enforcement agency

Raphael Vassallo
Malta has given the European Commission clear reassurances that it will take steps to improve law enforcement capability in the hunting sector, as tensions mount over a spring hunting season which may or may not materialise in just over a month’s time.
But BirdLife Malta yesterday accused the government of having actually downsized MEPA’s Enforcement Directorate in recent years, while stolidly refusing to allocate further resources to the police’s woefully understaffed Administrative Law Enforcement agency (ALE).
In a meeting with the Directorate General for the Environment last October, Malta committed itself to strengthen the Enforcement Directorate within the Malta Environment and Planning Authority (MEPA), which is in fact currently advertising the post of Enforcement Director.
Law enforcement and ‘strict supervision’ are among a number of conditions that might make a derogation from the European Wild Birds Directive possible, according to the government’s interpretation of last year’s European Court ruling on spring hunting.
In an internal email communication dated 17 November 2009, and seen this week by MaltaToday, a policy officer at the Commission’s DG Environment describes the outcome of a bilateral meeting between Maltese authorities and the Directorate General last October.
“During this meeting, the Maltese authorities provided us with information on planned further steps and measures to improve enforcement in order to fight and prevent illegal hunting,” Isabel de Faria wrote.
“It is understood that as part of the ongoing reform of the MEPA, one of the key areas of improvement will be enforcement. The Maltese authorities have informed that the Enforcement Directorate of MEPA will be strengthened and highlighted the Government’s willingness to put all the necessary resources to provide for a more effective enforcement.”
However, it is not at all clear from the MEPA reform document, published last week, what steps are currently being considered to improve law enforcement in this area.
A spokesman for the office of Dr Mario de Marco confirmed that the reform will oversee a general strengthening of the enforcement department, but was unable at such short notice (questions were sent Friday, the day this newspaper became aware of the October meeting) to provide specific details.
Meanwhile, BirdLife Malta yesterday re-submitted its own recommendations for wildlife protection and enforcement to the Office of the Prime Minister – in the process, accusing government of having actually reduced MEPA’s enforcement capability to a bare minimum, while at the same time doing nothing to beef up the police’s Administrative Law Enforcement agency (ALE).
Under the MEPA section, the BirdLife report points out that there is now only one individual left at the planning authority’s Enforcement Inspectorate.
“Although according to the recent MEPA reform, the Office of the Prime Minister says that officials responsible for enforcement are distributed to different departments within the Authority, this does not negate the fact that there is still only one enforcement official who deals with bird crime and illegal hunting and trapping, a situation which has unbelievably dragged on for a couple of decades, ever since the establishment of an Environment Inspectorate in the early 1990s with the Environment Protection Department,” the BirdLife report states.
The same report draws attention to the chronic lack of resources and equipment available to the ALE, and states that the district police are in no way in a position to act as effectively.
Official figures highlighted in the report show that during two months in spring 2008, the ALE arraigned 161 individuals, whilst the entire district police force only arraigned 14.
rvassallo@mediatoday.com.mt

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