The overall spring hunting mechanism applied by government and the reasoning expressed by this Legal Notice issued yesterday leave much room for improvement, the Hunters Federation said.
In a statement it said the actual numbers being contemplated by this notice were “highly controversial, unilaterally and unscientifically calculated”.
The Federation for Hunting and Conservation said in a statement that the European Court of Justice had contemplated that the autumn bags of around 5,500 quails and 5,500 turtle doves were inconsiderable, and that these numbers did not offer a satisfactory alternative solution to Maltese hunters.
The government was now offering 5,000 quails and 11,000 turtle doves, to be further deducted according to the previous autumn bags, as satisfactory alternative solutions.
The FKNK took note of the new legal notice that identified the mechanism that would now be utilised for the application of a derogation for the limited hunting in spring of the turtle dove and quail.
It referred to the government’s agreement with the European Commission for the drawing up of framework legislation for the application of a derogation and said that now, more than ever before, BirdLife et al should stop misinterpreting the ECJ judgement and accept that spring hunting is possible, and above all, never was, and is not, illegal.
The bone of contention arose from the paragraph that upset the whole concept of the parameters of the “Birds” Directive and that of the Guidance Document issued by the Commission itself as an interpretative guide to the directive.
The notice mentioned a one per cent limit of mortality as the maximum at which the minister could set the spring season bag limit.
“This calculation has already been scientifically performed by the FKNK in line with the formula evident in the guidance document and the results by far exceed the benchmark made by government for an autumn season (20,000 quails and 21,000 turtle doves).
“The Legal Notice then arbitrarily sets what government considers to be the maximum bag limit for any spring season at 5,000 quail and 11,000 turtle dove.
“But these limits can be decreased by the minister by legal notice if the previous autumn season sees a harvest of more than 10,000 for either quail or turtle dove.”
The FKNK considered that the legislation still discriminated against trappers, since trapping of the two species was not permissible, and against hunters who could only hunt on Sundays and public holidays, mainly because of work commitments.
“Hunting is not being permitted, when, ironically, all other recreational activities, football, motor racing, horse racing, normally take place on Sundays and public holidays.”
The FKNK said that with the help of around 50 of its members, it had to spend the whole of yesterday to carry out work that took Maltapost and Mepa over one month to complete - the compilation of the data of bagged quails and turtle doves last autumn from 12,691 Carnet de Chasse 2010 documents.
It said that initially, several glaring and dubious figures which unnecessarily inflated numbers stood out.
“”The FKNK will further investigate the data collected, and hopes to be in a position to come up with a complete report in time for today’s Ornis Committee meeting,” it said.