Hunters may ditch political neutrality clause

In a clear move to put pressure on political parties before the next election, the federation of hunters and trappers (FKNK) is proposing to remove a clause in its statute laying down that it should not be politically aligned.

The move, announced by the FKNK during a press conference yesterday, comes in the wake of a decision by the government to close the spring hunting season 10 days earlier than the date due after protected birds were shot down.

A similar proposal made by a member at the federation's last annual general meeting, at the end of March, was defeated. Two months later, it is the FKNK committee itself that is making the proposal.

FKNK spokesman Joseph Perici Calascione said the federation's only way to safeguard the hunting tradition, once the government and BirdLife were in cahoots to undermine the hunting and trapping tradition, was to seek the support of any political party - traditional or new - that would be sympathetic to its cause.

Commenting on the abrupt "anti-democratic" closure of the hunting season, Mr Perici Calascione said this was "abusive and unjust" collective punishment.

The fact that the police had not prosecuted anybody after the massacre of honey buzzards last week showed that the stoppage of the hunting season was a ploy concocted behind the scenes, he added.

Playing down the incidents that brought the spring hunting season to a halt, Mr Perici Calascione said he wondered why no pictures of dead honey buzzards had been printed in newspapers over the past week when BirdLife had been incessantly feeding the press with pictures of dead birds throughout the season.

"We have seen BirdLife's plan being put into practice since last year, when they started employing foreigners, among them a Turk, another from Bermuda, and an English woman," Mr Perici Calscione said.

"Lies" from BirdLife had not stopped during the hunting season as the NGO released old photos of birds that had supposedly been shot in Malta, but which had been taken years ago, the FKNK claimed.

Meanwhile, it said, there was still no proof over who had thrown oil in the nature reserve and who were the perpetrators of the recent destruction of 3,000 pine trees in Mellieha, even though hunters were being blamed for the incidents.

In a meeting with the federation recently, Environment Minister George Pullicino had accepted that harsh penalties were no solution, FKNK secretary Lino Farrugia said, adding that hunters had been proposing a system of self-regulation for the past 10 years.

When quizzed, Mr Farrugia said the federation agreed with a system whereby offenders would have their hunting licence confiscated for life. Reacting to the federation's comments, BirdLife said that although the government's recent decision to end spring hunting this year was a positive step forward, the government had not yet announced it will stop spring hunting in the future.

"BirdLife is committed to campaign until the Birds Directive is fully implemented," Birdlife Malta's Tolga Temuge said.

He said it was interesting to see that the FKNK council was now critical of BirdLife because it did not receive any shot honey buzzards.

"On their (the FKNK) website, a hunter even wrote he witnessed from his roof 30 honey buzzards fly over a valley and only one leaving alive. Apparently making unfounded allegations and self- contradictory statements is not new to FKNK management," Mr Temuge said. Insisting that each bird it received was reported to the authorities, with the cause of injuries in every case being verified by a veterinary and the dead birds handed over to the National Museum of Natural History, BirdLife said it would be drawing up a report on the shot and injured protected birds it received during this spring hunting season.