Birdlife Malta has expressed disappointment at what it deems the two main political parties’ attempts to appease hunters and trappers for votes.
This comes at the detriment of the rest of society, the organisation said in a press conference on Wednesday morning in Valletta.
Birdlife Malta CEO Mark Sultana said that this is putting Malta at risk of being taken again to the European Court of Justice on spring hunting, bird trapping and the illegal killing of protected birds.
Sultana said that for the two main parties, ‘those persons that do not have a hunting or trapping license are irrelevant. PL and PN both seem alienated from the fact that nobody enjoys the countryside when there are 10,000 hunters with loaded shotguns in our limited natural spaces.’
Sultana called out the lack of courage and ‘spine’ to stand up and bring solutions to control the illegal hunting in Malta which is ‘clearly rampant.’ The PN and PL are ‘both eager to see another spring hunting season, the most unsustainable practice, that goes against the EU Birds Directive.’
The ORNIS Committee, which is entrusted with advising the minister on matters concerning the conservation of wild birds, will be meeting on Wednesday and the agenda is aimed at weakening laws. This is an excuse to open a spring hunting season on the vulnerable turtle-dove, said Sultana.
‘While all of Europe is protecting this bird from extinction, Malta wants to hunt it down a few days before it reaches its breeding grounds’ he said.
#MaltaDaily