Updated 4.30pm, adds Birdlife press conference

Hunters are expected to ask for permission to shoot a protected bird when they lobby for a spring hunting season at a decisive meeting scheduled for Wednesday.

As the migration season, which sees thousands of birds fly over the island, fast approaches, the government’s consultative Ornis Committee will meet this afternoon to discuss whether or not a spring hunting season should be opened this year.

Made up of conservationists, hunters and regulators, the committee makes recommendations, which the government then decides whether to approve and implement.

Wednesday’s meeting, being held behind closed doors, is expected to see hunters push for this year’s season to allow them to hunt for turtle dove, a protected species environmentalists and EU lawmakers are adamant should be off-limits. The government had declared a moratorium on turtle dove hunting in 2017 after the European Commission had threatened legal action against the island if the practice was allowed to continue.

For the past two years, hunters have only been allowed to hunt quail in spring.

Spring hunting is not allowed by the EU’s Birds Directive but member states can apply an exception, known as a derogation, which has to be justified with the Commission afterwards.

Turtle doves are considered a “near threatened” species across the EU as population numbers have been steadily decreasing since the 1980s.

Sources said hunters are expected to urge the committee to recommend Malta invokes the directive exception and allow hunting, not just for quail but for turtle doves, too, as soon as this coming season.

The sources told the Times of Malta the hunters’ lobby, FKNK, had drafted a document in which it argues that turtle dove numbers have not been impacted by the government’s imposed moratorium and, therefore, hunting them is far more sustainable than environmentalists had previously claimed.

Read: Just 2,000 hunters and trappers reported catches in 2017

Government sources indicated the lobby group had already expressed its wish for turtle doves to be put back on the hunting menu in recent months.

The sources were coy on whether the government was likely to meet such demands, saying only the authorities were being “cautious”.

Although turtle dove hunting has been technically illegal since 2017, environmentalists argue that it nevertheless continued unabated. They say the government introduced the moratorium to placate Brussels while opening a quail hunting season in spring as a “smokescreen”, giving hunters a way out to shoot turtle dove under the EU’s radar.

“The spring hunting season was limited to quail on paper but it was open during the peak migration of turtle doves. The result was hunters shooting this species illegally,” veteran conservationist and BirdLife Malta CEO Mark Sultana said.

During last year’s spring season, BirdLife had reportedly recorded 148 “illegal killing incidents”. A third involved protected turtle doves.

Don't risk being taken to EU court, conservationists warn

The government would risk Brussels stepping in to block spring hunting altogether if turtle doves were put back on hunters’ list, Birdlife Malta warned on Wednesday.

Birdlife Malta CEO Mark Sultana

Addressing a press conference, Birdlife chief executive Mark Sultana told reporters that if the government buckled to pressure from the hunting lobby and allowed them to shoot at turtle doves this year, the likelihood would be that the European Commission would take the island to the European Court of Justice.

This, he said, could even see the Commission push for an interim measure that would stop the government from opening any hunting season whatsoever.

Mr Sultana was reacting to reports that the hunting lobby would this evening be lobbying the government to put turtle doves – a species classified as “vulnerable” – back on the hunting menu.

The government, he said, had already shown it was willing to accommodate hunters but it should not buckle to pressure just because the European Parliament elections were fast approaching.

Mr Sultana also took aim at hunters’ claims that spring hunting was a Maltese tradition.

“Spring hunting is something done by only a small number of people, and does not unite the country – quite the contrary,” he said.

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