I refer to the article ‘Drop in autumn hunting illegalities – Parliamentary Secretariat’, which appeared on March 4.

The article claimed a drop of hunting illegalities when, in fact, it reported a drop in reported hunting offences.

A drop in number of persons caught doing illegalities does not automatically mean that illegalities have dropped. It could be due to many things: enforcement was low, illegal hunters have become more cautious and, of course, illegalities could have really gone down – the latter is wishful thinking.

May I remind readers that the hunting season was closed for three weeks by the Prime Minister because of “repeated shooting of protected birds over the past few days”, to use his own words.

This is one reason why the reported illegalities were fewer, because of this hunting ban during the peak time for the migration. However, in the beginning of the season there were several incidents. Suffice to say that in the Mdina Natural History museum there are approximately 6,000 protected and endangered birds confiscated from hunters during the last eight years.

Even this figure does not in any way demonstrate the extent of illegal hunting because in reality it only represents the number of birds killed where the culprits were apprehended.