Those environmentally-minded members of the electorate who voted against the continuation of spring hunting have been in a state of delusion since the Yes camp managed a razor-thin majority in last Saturday’s referendum.

Since then, they have been under something of a dark cloud but, as the adage goes, every cloud has a silver lining.  The silver lining in this case is that the vast majority of Malta’s hunting fraternity has had a massive wakeup call.

They have apparently woken up to the fact that, as the Prime Minister made it clear on Sunday in the wake of the referendum result, this is their last chance, that breaches of hunting laws will not be tolerated and that there is still the real threat of the season being closed down.

The silver lining is that hunters can very well be expected to be on their best behaviour this spring, that they will observe the law and bag limits to the letter and number and that protected species will remain just that – protected.

After all, whatever the referendum’s result, the Prime Minister can close the hunting season at his discretion, as he had done last autumn – much to the very obvious chagrin of the hunting community.  And he has made it amply clear that he is willing to do the same again this spring.

But should he have closed the season yesterday after a hunter was caught red-handed shooting down a protected species?  As much as many would like that to be the case, the honest answer is ‘no’.

Since the news of the first confirmed illegality came in yesterday afternoon, many have been the calls for the Prime Minister to immediately close the season, as they claim he had said he would do last Sunday.

The problem is that he did not actually say that.  Yes, he talked the talk on Sunday and gave hunters a stern and final warning.  But what he actually said vis-à-vis closing the season is that he would resort to such action if there is a “flagrant abuse of hunting laws”.

For those who have had crossed wires, it was the exponents of the No campaign who on Sunday actually called for the spring hunting season to be suspended at the first sign of illegality.

And the shooting down of one protected bird, a cuckoo in this case, does not constitute ‘flagrant abuse’.  What does constitute flagrant abuse, however, is quite subjective and, should more illegalities occur, it will remain to be seen exactly how the Prime Minister defines it.

But in the meantime, things have been relatively quiet on the figurative western front and police patrols have been stepped up.  After all, the government simply cannot afford the embarrassment of yet another spring hunting season gone wild after the Prime Minister endorsed spring hunting on a number of occasions during the referendum campaign.

We do, however, disagree with the Prime Minister that the onus of controlling spring hunting is now on the hunting community and that enforcement cannot be solely down to the police.  This is a matter of law and order, and it is the relevant authorities and them alone who bear the onus of controlling the situation.

Asking hunters to report each other can, and should, complement a crackdown by the authorities but that is not something the government can rely on.  If the government wants hunters to report other hunters, it will also have to come up with a whistleblower set up since it is highly unlikely that hunters will report hunters on neighbouring land and then go and face their neighbour in court.

The enforcement ball is in the government’s court and the government’s court alone, and while hunters can play a part, that part cannot be, by any stretch of the imagination, a leading role.  If the season ends in disarray, the government that applied the spring hunting derogation once again and the Prime Minister who endorsed the Yes vote will be held ultimately accountable.