Victor Axiak wrote an interesting article on why he is voting ‘No’ in the spring hunting referendum, (‘The future must surely come’, The Sunday Times of Malta, March 15).

I have been a student under his supervision and have only words of praise for him; this letter is only meant to express my views as a hunter and conservationist.

The future must surely come, with or without us. However, none of us holds a crystal ball to be sure what the future will bring. We can only do today what we think is best for tomorrow.

I too would like the aspect of conservation of our natural environment boosted (including bird conservation). Some years ago I was involved in a conservation effort to re-introduce the barn owl in the Maltese islands. Our biggest setback was that our islands have changed so much (irreversibly) that the risks of failure were far too great.

To name a few, there are no more barns around, agricultural practices have changed drastically and all rats are poisoned on a regular basis. A simple attempt to stop rat poisoning in a small area of one square kilometre was met with resistance from all involved parties.

This goes to show that there are so many pressures on wildlife, and local conservation needs to be multi-faceted with a commitment and investment from each and every one of us. It’s easy pointing fingers at one of the pressures (like spring hunting) and to believe that without it we would be better off.

It is a known fact that most farmland owners in Malta are hunters and vice-versa, and for me any conservation efforts cannot be managed only by academics and/or policy makers, but the owners of the land and the public in general need to be involved.

Change is not easy for anybody and it takes time, so I agree that the future will come, maybe rather slowly, but surely. It is up to us how to bring this change. A referendum brought about abruptly from one side of the great divide is not the best way to involve hunters in conservation efforts to shape our future.

Perhaps Prof. Axiak is right and someday the need will be to stop all forms of hunting and trapping (in Malta and worldwide). I have no problem with this, as long as the reasons are purely scientific.

We need to narrow the great divide. We need to provide help and support to all hunters of goodwill who are willing to be involved in this continuous conservation improvement. We are dealing with people here, with emotions and lifestyles, but people who can learn, improve and be indispensable change agents.

Voting ‘No’ in the referendum is not the way to bring about this change. It’s a negative approach, with short-term gains. I’m voting ‘Yes’, for longer term gains.