Spring bird shooting season

Since the committee of the Kaccaturi San Ubertu have not been consulted with regard to the proposed new spring shooting season regulations, and on the assumption that the pronouncement of parliamentary secretary George Pullicino, as reported in The Times (August 23) is not a fait accompli, to wit "...the common position reached with the EU guaranteed that hunting in spring for turtle dove and quail would continue from March 25 until May 21" (which should have read: ...until May 22, as it applies at present), allow me space to present the views of our association.

As any shooter and trapper will tell you, the incidence of the turtle dove over the Maltese islands is on the decline, and the same can be said for its status in many other Mediterranean countries.

Nature abhors a vacuum, and as the breeding sites of the turtle dove are being vacated, these sites are taken over by the collared dove; some experts are of the opinion that the intrusion of the collared dove into these territories is one of the reasons of the decline of the turtle dove.

The collared dove is a sedentary species and where the ecological conditions, are favourable, it colonises those areas in great numbers. Such conditions, unfortunately, are absent from the Maltese islands.

Although the collared dove does not migrate on a regular basis, because this bird is a prolific breeder, numbers of these species regularly overspill into neighbouring areas.

To return to the proposed shooting regulations, a time will come, and it is not far off, when the turtle dove will be declared an endangered species, and being protected, it will be removed from the Maltese shooter's quarry list.

As the number of turtle doves is on the decrease, the number of collared doves overspilling from the Sicilian stock will be on the increase; sighting of the latter species are becoming increasingly more common locally.

Unless the authorities have a hidden agenda and it is their intention of weaning local sportsmen from game shooting in spring, it would make more sense for the regulations to read, inter alia, "...hunting in spring for all species of gamiem and quail would continue from March 25 until May 22, both dates inclusive".

Incidentally, the only other gamiema, so-called, to be met with in the Maltese islands is the laughing dove (gamiema ta' l-ilwien) which, by all accounts, is an irregular and very rare visitor.

Mr Azzopardi is secretary of Kaccaturi San Ubertu.