A short statement released by Birdlife Malta last Saturday was symptomatic of the times we live in.

A rare, beautiful spoonbill landed at the Għadira Nature Reserve and Birdlife chose to remain silent about its presence for three days.

Past experience showed that if poachers were aware that such a rare bird was in Malta, they would not hesitate to break into the reserve at night to try to kill it. We have seen it happen all too often.

Birdlife only chose to issue a statement to alert as many people as possible about its presence and for local residents to help keep an eye and ear out for any suspicious activity in the area.

Unless our new government realises the potential problem it has created for itself and the rest of the law-abiding citizens of this country, it will learn the hard way that it must take the illegal hunting issue seriously.

It’s been nearly a week since the end of a hunting season which should never have started in the first place, yet the rattle of gunfire persists. Residents are rudely woken up, men with shotguns roam the countryside, and tourism, Malta’s main economic driver, is being held at gunpoint.

Hunters evidently feel empowered by a Labour government which foolishly went to the extreme of signing a pact with the hunting lobby just days before the election, in a bid to secure their vote.

Among the measures taken so far, the Government decided to ditch hunters’ requirement to wear an arm band. If tour guides and parking attendants are required to wear an identification tag then why not men bearing weapons in the countryside?

The Government might be doing its utmost to beef up enforcement, but the nuances that hunters have more freedom in the countryside are bound to make that task more difficult, not to mention the waste of resources which could be put to better use.

It is ludicrous that Malta now has a so-called Animal Rights Parliamentary Secretary whose sole interest, it seems, is seeking loopholes in the system to protect hunters rather than the animals he has been entrusted to guard.

Readers were understandably left aghast when they heard Roderick Galdes’s statement that he was prepared to go to the extremity of exploiting an EU loophole (or “gap in the law”) to ensure the continuation of bird trapping.

The Government simply cannot legalise something which has been happening illegally. The EU will not allow Malta to negotiate something over which there has already been agreement, to phase out the trapping of finches. Brussels will not hesitate to remind the new Administration of its commitments.

Any change in hunting laws should first be discussed within the remit of the Ornis Committee, even though the Labour government decided to ditch from this organisation the only social scientist in Malta who studies hunting and trapping as cultural practices.

But let’s forget for a moment the fact that Malta has to fully abide by strict EU regulations where bird hunting is involved, and that further posturing would only serve to fast-track our path to the European court.

Mr Galdes and the rest of the government had better realise that the majority of citizens in this country love the environment and the wildlife that comes with it and in 2013 they will not tolerate bullies with shotguns.

The harder the Government tries to impress the hunting lobby, the quicker it will have to swallow its words and ludicrous pledges.