Under intense pressure from abroad, and from Malta itself, the government has finally been forced to cut back on trapping and shooting at sea. What’s more, the opposition can do nothing about it because the customary votes-for-kills policy is now a dead duck – if you’ll excuse the pun.

Furthermore, the public is invited to submit suggestions for the government’s consideration.

Well here is my suggestion, and the reasons for it. Ban spring hunting altogether – on land as well as at sea.

It’s on land that the armies of hunters roam unchecked for the most part.

It’s on land that they deny the countryside to other people and wake us up with their pre-dawn barrages seven days a week for most of the year, in and out of the hunting season.

It’s on land that the killing is on a massive scale with species after species shot to death, protected or not.

At sea they ignore the rules too, and the new regulations are a step in the right direction, in contrast to the constant stream of concessions to the hunters we’ve been used to. Even so it’s hunting on land, and the grossly over-extended hunting season riddled with loopholes, that is the bulk of the problem.

When the trapping curbs come into effect, those trappers inclined not to ignore it will only pick up their guns as many, if not most, shoot as well as trap.

The bottom line is – and everyone knows it – that as long as hunters are allowed to shoot quail and turtle doves in spring, they will use the cover to shoot at what they please – and that means everything.

It is extremely difficult to catch them in the act of shooting at protected species.

I have made this an open letter as my letters and suggestions to the government in the past have either been ignored or I have been given wrong information, and I doubt if there is anything in this one that will meet with their approval.

Clifford John Williams

SANTA LUCIA