Now that the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has decided not to permit the hunting season for 2008, please allow me to bring to your attention one of the letters sent to each hunter and trapper individually before the 2003 general election determining Malta's EU entry.

Birdlife Malta and International (BLM) started a misinformation campaign, providing the EU commissioner with extraordinary figures of millions of birds slaughtered to force the commission to set an example to all others by the tiniest member.

While BLM always aimed to ban spring hunting with the excuse that protected birds were being shot, trapping was also banned by the ECJ. The irony is that the Maltese government is spending thousands of euros to defend its case against the ECJ based on the misinformation provided by BLM, even though during EU negotiations, spring hunting on such game birds was accepted BLM.

The sympathy that BLM attracted in recent years is slowly dissipating. A recent article claimed that a number of trees planted in the Foresta 2000 area are already dry and dead, and the rest are in a bad state. BLM must look after this project as the public was the main contributor to this project. Both Birdlife's local and international arms have been working for many years to ban spring hunting, and questions are raised to find the difference between shooting a bird in Europe one month before breeding, or a bird which is migrating during breeding time?

Why are we deprived by the European Commission of our bag of a mere average of five game birds per hunter per season (ECJ report) when 100 per day are accepted abroad just because money is involved? And this takes place in countries which were among the first to criticise us.

The government and Birdlife must shoulder the responsibility of the consequences of the broken promises.

Hunters were promised that such traditions would never be banned after EU accession. Many hunters and trappers suffered financial repercussions, as many spent thousands of euros to buy land and lost business. Also, hunters and trappers paid their licenses for a closed season. We sincerely hope that the government will take a strong stand against this issue, so that justice will prevail.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.