Turtle doves are a plague

One cannot but notice on the way to Tripoli airport the plush fields by the perimeters of the smooth highway with the thousands of turtle doves devouring all the newly planted crops. My thoughts go back to the Libyan farmers who are prohibited from owning shotguns or cartridges. Without exception these poor dwellers are aggravated by all the damage done to their sprouting produce resulting from an ever increasing pest or what they rightly consider to be as a "plague". Anger is strongly vented by all the farmers across North Africa where turtle doves demolish the farmers' livelihood, which in turn trickles down the grapevine increasing consumer prices.

Ask the hundreds of Maltese hunters who have been to the Fayoum region in Egypt. Farmers plead with them to hunt from dawn to dusk and kill as many doves as they can. Here I cannot but think of Daphne Caruana Galizia, I.M. Beck, Ira Losco, Winston Zahra and all the rest of the tribe publicly squawking for a spring hunting ban on a species that is by no means far from extinction but is multiplying by the thousands.

So what's all the fuss about? Before arriving at the airport I concluded that those who support the ban on spring hunting and claim that "God's creatures" should not be destroyed (say this to any farmer and he will tell you who God's creatures really are) must either live in cloud cuckoo land or have no perception of what damage is being done by this pest. Turtle dove hunting in Malta during spring is a long standing traditional pastime for thousands of citizens and is a form of outdoor activity that provides relaxation and enjoyment.

But alas the "trumpeters" both in Malta and the EU are blind to the fact that turtle doves are an uncontainable plague. Can any of the anti-hunting clans or organisations convince me that the shooting of a few thousand turtle doves over Malta during spring is going to affect the millions of doves or deplete the species that inhabit North Africa, some of which cross the Mediterranean in April? This is the bottom line folks so let's be sensible please.

Are not foxes, crows and wood pigeons shot by farmers across European countries simply to prevent another form of destruction to their livestock and livelihood? These too are "God's creatures" however the "squawkers" turn a blind eye on this issue.