In all the years that we have lived in a rural area, rather than in town, our every spring has been marred by the sound of gunfire. From before dawn to dusk and beyond, the sound has echoed through the valley and across the fields. We have been regularly woken at five o’clock, and even the supposedly quietest day of the week has been torn apart by illegal Sunday shooters. We have watched birds of prey circling high overhead while men with guns go mad below. We have picked up small dead bodies from the garden, and we have rarely had the pleasure of listening to birdsong.
This is the first time in all these years that we haven’t heard a single volley as the days get brighter, warmer and longer. Well, there was just the one, but whoever it was must have been moved along pretty sharpish, because there was nothing after that. Except for the very odd few, the shooters appear to be respecting the law, however much they may disagree with it. That in itself speaks volumes about a change in attitude. They may object to the law, but at least they are not out and about defying it, though the violence against members of Birdlife, which is being attributed to shooters, does nothing to help their cause but rather the opposite.
And yes, the ban on shooting in spring does make a difference. I can’t say that the sky is dark with flocks of birds, but when I am in the house with the windows open, it is like being in an aviary. The sound of birdsong is so loud, and there seem to be so many of them. Eventually, with luck – though it will be years before the birds trust us again – we may get to the stage where larger, more impressive birds fly freely about, giving us the chance to look at them. I look back with sadness at the fact that my first-ever encounter with a significant wild bird, at the age of around eight, was with a dead hawk, its carcass blasted open by gun-shot, on a walk through the fields.
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Everywhere I walk in the streets, I seem to hear men grumbling loudly about the ban, their supportive wives muttering by their side while privately thanking the powers-that-be that their days as the gun-widows of the neurotically obsessed are over, in spring at least. The grumbling is deliberately loud, so that as many people as possible may hear the rebel with a cause. Look what the government has done to us. This was our sole love and passion and now we have nothing. If I am not allowed to hunt in spring then I will die. I’m seeing a doctor and taking kalmanti. I can’t sleep at night. If a person has a pastime, why deprive him of its pleasure? Hunting is a Maltese tradition and we shouldn’t let Europe interfere. Those birds are ours and I have a right to shoot them if I want to. It’s not as though thousands of birds pass overhead, so what’s all the fuss about? Birds breed like rabbits, so it doesn’t matter if we shoot some of them.
And all I can think of is that the government had to take shelter behind the European Union before firing this one off, and that without EU membership it would never have happened. If only the EU had such jurisdiction over civil rights, too – then we wouldn’t have one government after another falling over itself to appease the most conservative and backward elements of the religious right. But that’s out of the question.
The ban on hunting this spring is but an interim measure, handed down by the European Court of Justice as a stop-gap solution until it takes a decision on the main suit brought against Malta by the European Commission. That suit is expected to be brought to its conclusion within two years. The European Commission didn’t want Maltese shooters and trappers going on a spree and making the most of this spring and the next, so it asked for this interim decision. It got the ban for 2008, on grounds of urgency, but the court said that there is no such urgency where 2009 is concerned, and so a separate request must be made.
It’s sad that our own government didn’t have the guts to suspend shooting and trapping of its own accord, and had to be ordered to do so instead, but there you go. Sometimes it pays to be Pilate.
The European Commission said after the court’s interim judgement was announced: “The decision of the European Court of Justice is quite clear. Spring hunting should not be allowed (in Malta) until the final judgement on the original case instituted by the European Commission against Malta is given. If the European Commission sees that the Maltese government is planning to allow hunting in the spring of 2009, it will decide on whether to apply once again for interim measures. We expect the Maltese authorities to abide by this decision and not to allow spring hunting any longer.”
The government had been served with a written warning last October on the hunting of quail and turtle-doves in spring, but did nothing about it. It would have been ill-advised to do anything about it with an election in the offing, but now that’s in the bag, the government can take the initiative and crack down without waiting to be cracked down on itself.
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The problem with so many shooters and trappers here is that they don’t seem to understand that these are not ‘our’ birds simply because they are in our territory. They have no understanding of the fact that the thinking on migratory birds (and they don’t have to be migratory, either) has evolved towards their being part of Europe’s common heritage. It is not just Europe, either, because most of them migrate between Europe and Africa.
When the birds fly over Malta at this time of the year, they are returning to their northern European homes, where they breed, after wintering in Africa. They don’t breed in Africa (which should keep Norman Lowell and his band of merry nutters happy) but in Europe, which means that when they are shot in Malta, they haven’t yet had time to reproduce. Every bird taken out in Malta reduces the population not just by that one bird, but exponentially. This is something else that the shooters and trappers pretend not to understand – or understand and hope that the problem will sort itself out.
On television the other day I heard one trapper argue: but don’t cats catch birds, so why can’t we? Oh baby, we’re supposed to be more civilised than cats. And cats don’t have guns and traps. We really do have a long way to go if hunters see themselves as part and parcel of the animal kingdom, instead of waiting for us to dismiss them as such.
Another man, this time a shooter, was told by his interviewer, Reno Bugeja on TVM’s Dissett, that there are far more people who strenuously object to bird-hunting than there are who are passionate about it. His reply was that this is immaterial, “because hunting came before them.” Bugeja then went to a ‘hanut tat-te’ in Rabat, where he vox-popped some other hunters, all of whom looked suitably depressed and spoke dramatically. “I have nothing left in this life.” “My life is over.” “I am feeding a dog for nothing.” “Everything I love is gone.” “If the government doesn’t put things back the way they were, I’m going to leave Malta.” (Iss! Ar’hemm, hej – that will be one fewer to be getting on with.)
What makes you think you have the right to shoot those birds, when they’re not yours, Bugeja asked. “Of course they’re mine!” the my-life-is-over shooter replied, the black circles round his eyes even bigger than Jason Micallef’s on 9 March. “Yes, those birds are mine because I pay to practise my sport.” Oh, the bliss of illogical thinking.
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