Hunters' vote

To some biased people the recent general election "proved" that hunters and trappers are "a spent force" and the hunters' and trappers'vote "totally insignificant and ineffective".

It is incredibly naive to think that the votes of hunters and trappers and their families amounting to well over 30,000 do not make a difference in Maltese elections which can be won or lost by a few hundred votes. In the last election the hunters and trappers were at liberty to vote as they wished and one cannot say what they did.

The positions of the Nationalist Party and of the Malta Labour Party were practically identical on the spring hunting issue, both declaring they would abide by the decision of the European Court of Justice and that both parties if elected to government were prepared to defend spring hunting at the ECJ.

If one thing can be stated objectively, this is that this election has proved nothing conclusively about the hunters' and trappers' vote. The only party with a clear-cut anti-hunting policy failed, yet again, to obtain even one parliamentary seat. This alone should by now hopefully send a clear message to the leaders of both major political parties, who were so scared of losing the so-called environmentalists' votes. If ever such votes had any true value for the self-proclaimed environmentalists, then Alternativa Demokratika should have had a voice in Parliament for 18 years.

More importantly on this particular occasion the hunting federation (FKNK) did not think it appropriate to direct its members to vote for a particular party. The government just elected, now more sensitive to the wishes of an electorate of which hunters and trappers form a decisive chunk, will be more cautious on all matters, hunting included. It cannot afford to ignore the message behind an election result giving it just a wafer-thin majority. One lesson the new government has hopefully learnt is not to give too much importance to the bleating of people known for their extreme anti-hunting sentiments.

Hunters and trappers are the true environmentalists, the first managers of our natural habitat, and the best contributors towards what is known, to use a buzzword misunderstood by many, as biodiversity. I firmly believe that the EU Commission's mission statement to "halt the loss of biodiversity by 2010" will not happen in Malta if the hunting/trapping seasons are not opened, especially the traditional socio-cultural season of spring.