Spring brings with it many things in Malta – a turn of milder weather, Easter, and – of course – the ever controversial spring hunting season.

This week, in what may be seen as yet another episode of de ja vu, we heard how the spring hunting season is set to open at the end of this month.

This is despite the fact that many businesses have been forced to close, that all sports have been forced to stop, and that many other activities have been stopped due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

In truth, this is no different to the situation last year – much of Malta was closed precisely due to the pandemic, and yet the hunting season was rubber stamped and allowed to go ahead.

There is one major difference between last year’s situation and this year’s though – when the government announced on 6 April that the spring hunting season would open, Malta had had 227 cases of Covid-19 and no deaths related to the virus.

Now, Malta is reporting more than 227 cases every day.

Now of course, as with anything else, counter-arguments can be made.  One can say that hunters generally take to the countryside for their ‘sport’ alone, and that at the same time people are still allowed to go out for a walk.

However there is the aspect of responsibility to consider here.  Like the public is being encouraged to make sacrifices – to stay inside and take all necessary precautions to avert the spread of the pandemic, we see no reason why the hunting lobby cannot make a similar sacrifice.

Lobbyists like the FKNK for instance, go to great lengths to point out how socially responsible their organisation is and how much they do for the collective good of the people.

We know that hunting is too much of a potential vote-loser for any of the major political parties to even dare consider speaking out against it, but maybe it’s time for these same lobbyists to take matters into their own hands and consider being socially responsible and deciding to skip one hunting season in view of the pandemic – we’re sure their shotgun barrels won’t rust over the prospect of missing one three week or so hunting season.

There is also another aspect to this matter – that of, as usual in Malta, enforcement.

The police’s Environmental Protection Unit (previously the ALE) is understaffed at the best of times – let alone when the police force as a whole has to enforce a raft of pandemic measures.

Last year, when this specific point was brought up, the FKNK called on hunters to police themselves and make sure that the rules are followed so that their ‘tradition’ can be kept alive.

As it turned out, 2020 was the worst year on record for illegal hunting: 210 protected birds were found shot – over double the 99 found shot in 2019.

So clearly, a significant number of hunters either make rubbish policemen or simply aren’t really interested in policing themselves.

The numbers don’t lie: they mean that more police dedicated to enforcing hunting are needed – but this comes at the same time as when the whole police force has all its hands on deck to enforce measures related to the pandemic.

While there seems to be little doubt that the season will open – Gozo Minister Clint Camilleri, himself a past hunter, who is responsible for hunting (we aren’t sure if this is what the Labour party had in mind when it suggested appointing technocrats specialising in specific subjects to Cabinet) has reportedly already given the season the green light and the Ornis committee has recommended that it goes ahead – the arrangements which will be made to properly enforce the hunting season should also be made public.

With this in mind, one hopes that members of the police force will not have to be diverted from making sure that people follow the arguably much more important pandemic laws to making sure that hunters don’t have the cheek to shoot what they shouldn’t be shooting.