The European Commission has asked Malta to send a report on the outcome of the spring hunting season by the end of this month, amid doubts about the veracity of the number of birds that hunters claimed to have shot.
Although officially the EU didn’t want to speculate and has refused to pass any comments on the low figures, EU officials close to the Commission’s Environment Directorate informally told The Times they have “serious reservations” about the published figures.
“While expecting the report from the Maltese authorities, we don’t really think the figures presented to Mepa by the hunters are very credible. The discrepancy between these figures and what used to be reported by the same hunters during recent spring seasons is too large,” the officials commented.
According to the figures reported by Mepa, hunters killed 366 quails and 1,842 turtle doves during this year’s restricted season between April 13 and 30. This is much less than the restricted quota of 2,500 quails and 9,000 turtle doves allowed by the Maltese authorities following discussions with Brussels to make sure that the allowable catch respects the judgment of the European Court of Justice (ECJ).
The new rules obliged hunters to catch just one bird per day, and they had to send an SMS with the details to Mepa as soon as they made their catch.
However, this system was harshly criticised by the environment lobby, which called it “a joke”.
The EU officials, who spoke to The Times, said that recent statistics reported by Maltese hunters in other spring hunting seasons reveal wide discrepancies with the 2011 data, even if the migration season was the worst ever, as the hunters are claiming.
“Though much shorter than the two-month, full-blown season, which Malta used to have in spring, the 2011 season was still held in the peak of the migratory season. Thus, we can’t really understand why this year Maltese hunters caught fewer birds in two weeks than they used to in just one day in April,” the officials said.
During the last hunting seasons, Maltese hunters used to report catching about 15,000 quails and 32,000 turtle doves in the two-month season. The largest catches used to be reported during the last two weeks of April – the same period as this year’s hunting season.
According to the official carnet de chasse figures for 2005, 2006 and 2007, during the second half of April hunters used to report catching more than 3,000 quails and 8,000 turtle doves per week.
In 2007, the latest comparable figures before this year’s season, during the second and third week of April, when the season was open, hunters reported killing over 9,000 quails and 16,000 turtle doves per week.