Frustrated by the decision of the Ornis Committee allowing for the spring hunting season to run from March 15 to April 4, BirdLife Malta said it was contemplating calling a second referendum on spring hunting to coincide with the 2019 European and local council elections.

The new dates just announced by the Ornis Committee have effectively moved back hunting for quail to coincide with the peak migration of turtle doves. This, BirdLife warns, brings the risk of turtle doves being shot “accidentally” by trigger-happy hunters. Past experience shows that the ‘accidental’ shooting of protected birds is not unheard of.

A moratorium on the hunting of turtle dove was imposed when it was demonstrated that their numbers had declined and, indeed, it is outlawed across the EU during spring. BirdLife claims “this year’s spring hunting season has been designed to target the protected turtle dove”. Hunters, of course, deny that. BirdLife will, no doubt, keep a close eye on hunters to prove them wrong but, regretfully, the damage would have been done. Prevention is always better than cure.

The public may recall that a petition drawn up by a coalition of NGOs to hold a referendum to ban spring hunting successfully achieved the number needed to trigger one in April 2015. But, then the referendum was won by the hunting lobby by a slim majority.

Should BirdLife seek to mobilise support for another such referendum only three years after the last?

There are two strong arguments for considering holding such a referendum.

The first is the moral revulsion that so many people in this country harbour about the ‘sport’ of hunting. By their behaviour over the years, irresponsible hunters have given up all claim to have their ‘sport’ treated as worthy of public support. Their plea that it is a pastime, an intrinsic part of the Maltese culture and tradition, tends to be belied by the contemptuous disregard for protected species. This year, the concern is that turtle doves will be the protected species in the cross-hairs of their shotguns.

The second argument in favour of another referendum is the democratic right of civil society to be heard on this issue in the face of a deaf and unreceptive political hegemony by the two major parties. There is a fundamental right for the Maltese people to make its voice heard.

Although this newspaper’s views on the unacceptable behaviour of irresponsible hunters are well known, the difficulty of BirdLife’s call for a referendum is that it is only three years since the last and costly one was held. The hard reality is that it seems unlikely there will be the public mood for a repeat on this vexed issue so soon after the failure of the last.

BirdLife would seem far better advised to focus its efforts on lobbying the European Commission to put pressure on Malta to respect the Birds Directive by more closely monitoring what happens each spring with the possibility of the derogation – the only EU country to have one – even being withdrawn.

BirdLife must again rebuild the wide coalition of NGOs that came together so effectively three years ago to lobby Brussels. Banning spring hunting here would bring Malta into line with other countries. There are other ways of doing this without resorting to a referendum.

This is a Times of Malta print editorial