Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1446843
9 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 30 JANUARY 2022 INTERVIEW old, established tree… and planting six saplings somewhere else instead. It's not a mathematical equation. One doesn't balance out the other. What about the social legacy that the old tree represent- ed, to the communities that used to en- joy it? That 'old tree' has a social value, as well as an environmental one. And as more trees are cut down, more people are beginning to see, and feel this… In fact, one of the things which sur- prised me most, was actually the [Spring hunting] referendum itself. Even if we lost it, by a mere 2,200 votes…. we lost it against the government. I hate to say it, but if people were to really put their hand on heart, they will admit that the referendum was not lost 'against the hunting lobby'… it was lost 'against the government'. But what we also realised, from that re- sult, was that we have supporters from both political parties; and that, when you focus the decision purely on the environmental aspect – which is what that referendum did: and not even 'The Environment' as a whole… but just one, single slice of it – people will want, and vote, to protect it. I am convinced that Nature has a lot of support, in this country. But the prob- lem with Nature is that… you need more than 'half', or even 'three-quarters', of the country to protect it. Because if a tree is protected, it might be enjoyed and appreciated by the entire country… but it only takes one person, to chop a tree down. The referendum may have been 'lost against government', as you put it… but it was still lost, regardless of the margin. This suggests that there it will take more than 'education' to win this battle; there also has to be an element of advocacy, and lobbying. How much do you see the hunting issue to be a political – rather than environmental – problem? I see it primarily as an enforcement issue, myself. This is, in fact, what the advocacy side of Birdlife is all about. We are lobbying to have stricter en- forcement… better regulations… and both those things are ultimately polit- ical objectives. They require a culture change, from top to bottom, that says: 'You know what? We need to be seri- ous about this. Nature is something that needs to be protected.' And unfortunately, this is something that hasn't really changed much in the last 30 years. If you had to draw a graph, of how enforcement was carried out in the 1960s, all the way to today… it wouldn't be a straight line, going up or down. It would be very 'curvy'. And you will notice an unmistakable correlation with general elections. Invariably, en- forcement goes down in the year of an election. And you don't have to be a ge- nius to understand why, either. But what saddened me the most is the fact that the present Labour government has now created a 'division', within the administration of the law. From having one regulatory authority responsible for biodiversity in general – MEPA, ERA, call it what you will – the government, for political reasons, removed 'hunt- ing' (and even then: only hunting… not the rest of what goes into 'conservation of wild birds' – and entrusted it to the 'Wild Birds regulatory Unit'. That, in my opinion, was a mistake. The intention there was not to 'safe- guard birds'… but to help the hunting lobby. Nothing more, nothing less… Hang on: you're describing it as a 'mis- take' – and I see what you mean – but it was done deliberately. And from a purely political perspective, it might al- so be an 'astute move'. It's no use see- ing things from an environmental per- spective, if the people you're arguing with don't share that perspective them- selves. What political argument would you use to convince those people? But this is a political argument, too. I believe that Nature should be consid- ered as one of those political pillars, that both parties should agree upon. I don't see this just as an environmental state- ment, myself – though that is what I am, and that is what my own perspective is. And yet, I do see your point. The reali- ty today, is that we have a hunting lobby which is trying to convince the political parties, that they can win them, or lose them, an election. And we have politi- cians who – by their actions, and deci- sions – clearly don't realise that people, today, care much more about the envi- ronment than ever before. So they keep giving the hunters all these concessions – like handing Miz- ieb and L-Ahrax over to the FKNK, for instance. But… the people were angry at that. It wasn't just 'Nationalists' or 'La- bourites' who were angry. It was across the board… including Labour Party poli- ticians, up to a certain level. There were people within the Labour government itself, who were saying that 'this does not make sense'. And people are right to be angry, be- cause – regardless how much they them- selves may care about birds – they can see that it's a travesty. That government is caving into one lobby group, because of its political strength, and abdicating its own responsibility to protect the en- vironment… At the risk of a devil's advocate ques- tion: it's not just the hunters who have 'political strength'. Birdlife, too, has risen from a humble little NGO – meet- ing in your dad's living room – to what is effectively a large, multi-national organisation. Hunters question your access to EU funding, among other things. So… would you agree that the 'David and Goliath' scenario we were once used to, isn't really as imbalanced as it once was? It is quite easy to answer that, really. First of all, we managed to grow – and it's true: we did grow – because of the vision, and the foresight, of the people who founded Birdlife Malta in 1962. Those people understood, at one point, that… 'we need to have a base; we can't keep meeting in a living room anymore'. Then, they understood that they needed to employ people… to start tapping in- to financial sources… to strengthen our scientific backbone, by applying for EU Life Project funding, and so on. That's how we grew. And if we re- ceive government funding, it is always in exchange for a service provision. So if we're managing nature reserves… it's because we give 6,000 schoolchildren free educational visits; because we make sure that all the reporting that needs to be done, and sent to the EU, is done free of charge. I also understand that it is easier to ap- proach a private company for funding to 'save a bird'… than to kill one. So of course, if I and [FKNK President] Lukas Micallef were to both go to the same company – unless it was owned by hunt- ers, of course – my chances of attracting a donation, will be higher than his. Why? Because we don't have an egoistical pas- time. It's not even a pastime… it's an ob- ligation we feel we have to society. We want to protect nature… But they have a card in their pockets – or a 'person in their bag' - that we don't have. And that person is a politician: a person with power. And we fought against that 'Goliath'… because I have to say, I still think they're the Goliath, my- self. And we nearly toppled this Goliath over, in the referendum… All the same, I don't think the analogy between resources can really be done. Mainly, because there is a difference be- tween an NGO which focuses only on its own members' demands – in this case, killing or trapping birds - and an organ- isation which doesn't even need to have any members at all… … because everyone will benefit from the work that we do. The government will benefit; the people who love nature will benefit… and so will the people who don't care about nature at all: whether they realise it or not. Because if we're fighting against the pollution caused by cruise-liners, for instance: who's going to benefit from that? Only the nature lovers? No: everyone will benefit from that… especially, the people who live in the harbour area. This is why you can't really compare an NGO like Birdlife Malta – or Na- ture Trust, Din L-Art helwa, or so many others that do similar work – with something that is only called an 'NGO', because there is a 'Voluntary Organisa- tions Act' that agrees to list it as one. In reality, they are member-only clubs. Nobody who is not a member of a hunt- ing organisation, is ever going to really benefit from one… PHOTO: JAMES BIANCHI / MALTATODAY