There are many Pagodas and Buddhist enclaves in Hanoi.  There is also a little Christian Church dedicated to St Joseph, all neatly prepared for  Easter with bright red hangings and fancy lights dangling from the trees surrounding its parvis.

A raw iron fence demarcated the Christian enclave. There were no fences around the Pagodas. I went in all of them, prayed in all of them and my prayers were the same.

But it was in the Christian Church that my mind sped off to the strong family and cultural traditions I was missing in Malta.

Same prayers, same good, (not spelling mistake), different names and perception of that good, and different ways of expressing the belonging and celebrating of the group. 

The different ways of marking our beliefs make up our traditions and it is these traditions rooted in our culture and religions or the lack of them that give us an identity.

That identity needs to be and can be acknowledged but it does not need to fence us in or out.

Essentially, what is good remains good, what is bad and inhuman remains bad, whatever the religion, or tradition.

But Easter was yesterday and so were the celebrations worldwide including those of my countrymen feasting and chasing l-irxoxt en masse, together, like brothers.

To-day is Monday, and the population is again painfully split in half.

Let me make myself clear from the outset.

I am a bird trapper’s daughter, and have been brought up in a community where the tradition of  hunting and trapping is part of our way of life. What my uncles caught in the morning we slow cooked in the evening  in laned tal-kunserva, on little  brash and hatab makeshift  rubble stoves we built ourselves. And believe me,  after having tasted culinary delights from the four corners of the world, I still have to find a dish that can come close to gamiema simmered in water with celery, parsley, spring onions and carrots freshly picked from our little field and accompanied by  freshly dug out yellow potatoes, cut into shapes and fried with rock salt. Living off the land and with the land was a way of life in rural Malta and still is in many precious places.  

It was unthinkable to waste anything, we even fed our potato and vegetable peel to our roaming chickens. My uncles did not hunt just to kill but it was always to eat.  They still do and I’m as proud of them now as I was then because like most hunters and trappers , their  way of life is inextricably entwined with the traditions they uphold.

It would be inconceivable for me to contemplate the abolition of hunting but I have no qualms about my NO for spring hunting.

As I said, I am fully in favour of sustainable hunting, and because I am a supporter of sustainable hunting and the hunter's way of life I think that at this point, the Maltese hunter has to sacrifice the few days of often harassed hunting occasionally allowed in spring, to reacquire peaceful enjoyable unharassed sustainable hunting for the rest of the year 's hunting seasons.

After all spring is breeding time, and as nature enthusiasts we all know what breeding time means for nature.

Meanwhile, it is painful to witness the prejudices, insults and divisions that are resulting from this referendum campaign.

When one thinks about how this came about, one realises that our population is split in half not because of hunters or birdwatchers , but because the face of our Malta has changed and is changing fast to the extent that so much of our countryside  has been annihilated, that  hunters and nature lovers, ramblers and trappers are being squeezed onto the same smaller and smaller plot of remaining land, and forced to  fight for their patch while one government after another  keeps us  the populace busy divided and at each other's throat,  while its main sponsors, the developers,  wreak havoc on our countryside... and rule.

In short, our population is split in half because a previous  spineless PN government and a present developer hijacked PL government,  have allowed and are allowing as we speak, the disappearance of what is left of our scanty natural environment.

Building zones have been extended and re-extended, precious farmland devoured, our valleys quarried away and our garigue dumped upon relentlessly.  Sand dunes have been built upon, coves and rocky enclaves buried under mounds of building debris.

And all the while, hunters and trappers are portrayed by much of the manipulated media as the hijackers of our countryside.

Just imagine what Malta is going to look like when all the building zone extension approved in 2006, Mistra and ancillary infrastructures,  White Rocks, all the high-rises, all the 'agritourism',' olive groves ', 'stables', quarries extended and filled with photovoltaic panels and other structures permitted by upcoming policies, are built.

Just imagine what it’s going to look like from the sky to the birds that fly, and what it's going to feel like on land.

The referendum is taking place because both political parties in government put their partisan needs, patronage and votes, before their duty to uphold and enforce justly the derogation granted to allow a few days of hunting in spring.

They both used and will continue to use the derogation to hoodwink hunters and environmentalists alike into voting for them again by promising everything to everyone at the same time,  all the time knowing that hunting and trapping and bird-watching and rambling is being choked to death anyway by the destruction of our natural assets  with their tacit consent.

Under the watch of both administrations hunters and environmentalists have been abused and vilified, criminalised and rubbished and used alternately to cover the authorities reluctance to walk their public talk in private too. 

Meanwhile mothers and wives keep digging up their paltry savings, or worse borrowing large sums of money to pay for fines inflicted on the chosen, while nature lovers cry over the carcasses of protected birds shot in defiance  by the very few seeking vindication for the chaos.

This Saturday  our people should vote NO to Spring hunting,  to give the few birds that come  here a chance to eventually complete their breeding cycle  and to preserve  sustainable hunting in peace during the other seasons.

This Saturday our people should vote NO to free the hunters from the clutches of governments which use them and abuse them.

This Saturday our people should vote NO for spring hunting because our natural environment has shrunk so much that for at least a few days  a year, all of it should be made available for families to roam freely.

By voting No to spring hunting we will be ensuring the existence of sustainable hunting, and we will be casting a vote in favour of the rehabilitation of the 'hunter' image, which has been senselessly abused for years.

After Saturday, hunters and environmentalists would do well to unite in a common front to safeguard  what's left of our precious natural heritage before it is too late .

Just keep in mind that there will be no hunting, no birds, no habitats  and ecosystems to admire and no walks in the countryside without countryside.

We should not let any government divide us again on environmental issues. Our environment is  seriously under threat.

A NO on Saturday should only be the beginning of a big resounding yes for the  preservation of  what is left of the natural heritage of our  little densely populated islands.

Malta and Gozo are counting on us. We cannot afford to let them down. Not anymore.

This time it has to be a NO.