The recruitment of some four dozen hunting marshals from within the ranks of the police force will provide some welcome reinforcement for the hard pressed Administrative Law Enforcement unit in regulating the spring hunting season; but will it be enough?

With the official spring hunting season having opened yesterday, the government’s credibility is on the line. Not only will it have to prove to the European Commission that the derogation the country applied to open the highly controversial spring season is justified, and in the process prove that it has properly enforced bag limits, it will also need to show the country that the law of the land will be upheld and that those who fail to do so will face the full brunt of the law.

Impunity is simply no longer an option.

With this year’s legal bounty of 11,500 birds – 9,000 turtledoves and 2,500 quail – being split between the 5,500 hunters holding special €50 licences this spring, enforcement will be far easier said than done. This equates to two birds per hunter over an 18-day season, meaning law-abiding hunters will have to choose their quarry very selectively indeed.

Last year the government had applied a cap of 2,500 spring hunting licences, allowing room for more birds per hunter, but this year’s removal of the cap and the subsequent 5,500 licences issued effectively opens the field to even more violations of the law than last year.

The government must, once and for all, show zero tolerance to all forms of illegal hunting. After all, its credibility is on the line in more serious terms than merely facing a slap on the wrist or punitive fines from the European Commission.

Any which way you look at it, illegal hunting is illegal and individuals cannot be allowed to run rampant and flout the law of the land without impunity. No civilised country can allow mass law breaking to take place, under whatever guise that may be, not even the protection of what is described as a traditional pastime.

By failing to adopt a zero tolerance policy toward spring hunting in the past, the government has already set a very dangerous precedent. And that precedent, if left unchecked, will be reinforced once again this year unless there is a serious crackdown on infractions of hunting laws.

After all, if one group of individuals is made to feel it is above the law and that their personal volitions are not subject to the legal parameters that the rest of society lives within, what is to stop other groups from feeling and doing the same?

Legal amendments introduced in the wake of past mass infractions have introduced heavy fines for illegal hunting, and heavier fines still for repeat offenders. Not only will the forces of law and order need to bring any and all perpetrators to justice, but the courts will also have to apply the full brunt of the law.

Here the judiciary has been accused of being soft on hunting crimes. Figures produced by BirdLife Malta and published a year ago showed that despite the stiffening of penalties against illegal hunting in 2007, 34.5% of hunters convicted of illegal practices were given fines below the minimum threshold prescribed by law, while the bare minimum fines were handed down by the courts in 51.4% of cases and it was only in 3.8% of cases that those convicted had their licences suspended although the measure is a legal requirement to be applied to repeat offenders.

The Prime Minister has warned that enforcement will be key to the justification of Malta’s derogation, having stated, in parliament, “It is the government’s intention to take all necessary measures to ensure that the law is fully observed in this regard. But the hunters and the organisations representing them should cooperate to ensure their own activity. If there is no such cooperation, there can only be one outcome – no hunting in the spring.”

We interpret these comments to mean that this is the absolute last chance for spring hunting and, if Malta stands any chance of reapplying the derogation in years to come there will not only have to be zero tolerance on the part of the authorities, but on the part of the hunters as well.