Updated 8am Thursday
The government this morning praised the intervention of the UK junior minister for the environment in yesterday's debate in the precincts of the House of Commons on hunting in Malta.
The debate was called by Sir John Randall MP, a Conservative backbench parliamentarian, followed intense UK mainstream media coverage of Malta’s spring hunting issue over the past few weeks.
In reaction to the debate, the Head of Malta's Wild Birds Regulation Unit, Sergei Golovkin, who was also present in the hall said: “There appears to be dearth of objective and factual information about this issue outside of Malta. Media coverage of spring hunting often obscures the distinction between legal hunting, which the EC Birds Directive explicitly recognises as a legitimate activity that is practised across the EU, and the illegal shooting of protected birds, which in Malta is rigorously controlled through field enforcement and legal deterrents.
"Whilst Sir Randall’s arguments mainly mirrored those of anti-hunting campaigners, the intervention of Junior Minister for the Environment George Eustice on behalf of the UK government was an objective and balanced one, which indicates that the UK government is well aware of the complexity and multiple dimensions of the situation”.
The government spokesman also said that the common claim that Malta was the only EU member state that allowed hunting in spring was incorrect, as several EU countries, including the UK, allowed shooting of certain bird species in spring.
"Contrary to the common misconception that spring hunting of turtle doves and quails in Malta contributes to the decline in the population of these species in the UK, turtle doves and quails migrating over Malta do not migrate to the UK but elsewhere in Europe and are part of populations that are predominantly either stable or increasing. In all, 10 EU member states permit hunting of turtle doves and quails. The number of turtle doves and quails hunted in Malta is minuscule in comparison with the numbers legally bagged elsewhere in the EU, which amount to three million birds of each species being annually hunted."
“Spring hunting is legal, as long as the specific legal parameters of the Birds Directive, which provides for a system of derogations, are met”, Mr Golovkin said, adding that the legality of Malta’s spring hunting derogation has been affirmed following the European Court of Justice ruling on this issue.
During yesterday's debate, Sir John Randall called on his government to request the European Commissioner for the Environment to ensure that the Birds’ Directive was properly enforced in Malta.
Sir John said that hunting was not Malta’s national pastime and the majority of Maltese wanted it to stop.
He referred to the signatures collected for a referendum to stop spring hunting and hoped that it would be held early next year. He also called for donations to the referendum fund.
Sir John said that he was not calling for Malta to be boycotted. But he believed that should Malta stop spring hunting it would become a very popular tourist destination for birdwatchers and their families.
“We support the majority of Maltese who want the hunting practice to end,” he said.
Earlier, he noted that he never visited Malta because of hunting and said that this was a pity because apart from this issue, he had a very high opinion of the country.
He said that he was recently riveted by BBC presenter Chris Packham’s video blogs taken with the help of “courageous” Maltese members of BirdLife who had to face police questioning and some of whom had been fighting for years for spring hunting to stop, even putting their lives on the line.
Junior Minister for the Environment George Eustice noted that this was a very contentious issue in Malta and said he was not sure whether British intervention would help the government take any decisions.
He also noted that it was unlikely that migratory birds from Britain flew over Malta so it was unlikely that Maltese spring hunting was impacting the UK bird population.