Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1497281
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 16 APRIL 2023 10 OPINION Hunters, accusing Birdlife of 'handling dead birds'. Whatever next? OK, let me try and work this one out for myself. Last Thursday, BirdLife Malta staged a symbolic protest against this year's Spring hunting season for Turtle Dove – scheduled to open tomorrow, 17 April – by placing a dead specimen of that particular bird on the steps of Castille. The carcass itself, we were told, "had been found by a member of the public earlier during the day in Delimara: a notorious illegal hunting spot." And while that doesn't really amount to 'cast-iron evidence', that the unfortunate bird was indeed – as claimed by BLM – the victim of illegal hunting, in that particlar vicinity.... ... let's face it: we don't really need to 'conduct an autopsy' to find out, do we now? Leaving aside that the cause of death, in such cases, is usu- ally paintakingly obvious, even at at a glance (let's face it: there are only so many ways to ex- plain the presence of 'bloody, lead-pellet-sized HOLES' on a dead bird's carcass; and – sor- ry, FKNK! – 'suicide-by-self-in- flicted-firearm-wounds' isn't exactly among the most con- vincing.) But no matter: the issue here is not whether this particu- lar specimen of Turtle Dove was shot 'illegally', or other- wise. (After all, it will be sud- denly become perfectly 'legal' to shoot that exact same bird - just like that, from one mo- ment to the next - at precisely 4 o' clock tomorrow morning.) And, besides: it's not as though Birdlife's action, last Thursday, even had very much to do with that one, solitary specimen of Turtle Dove, at all... or even, for that matter, with the entire issue of 'illegal hunting', in all its myriad man- ifestations. In fact: you could almost say it's the clean other way round. As the hunters' federation itself correctly surmised, in its oth- erwise OTT reaction (more of which later): the act of ceremo- nially 'dumping' a dead Turtle Dove, on the doorstep of the Office of the Prime Minister, was very clearly intended to symbolise a far greater 'crime against wildlife', than the one that was evidently perpetrated in Delimara last Thursday. Quite obviously, Birdlife Malta was also trying to draw Robert Abela's attention to the much more serious atroc- ity, that his own government is willingly committing – even now, as we speak – by permit- ting the legal hunting, under any circumstances whatsoever, of a bird which is officially clas- sified as... 'at risk of EXTINC- TION', no less! (And in the middle of Spring, too: you know, just to make sure that as few of these endan- gered birds as possible, actually make it back to their European breeding grounds to 'repro- duce'...) But anyway: I won't similarly 'reproduce' all the arguments I've already made, in recent ar- ticles, on this particular issue. Let's just say, for now, that the whole point of Birdlife Malta's little 'stunt', last Thursday, was to highlight that: a) the real problem, in this particular context, happens to concern hunting of the LEGAL – as opposed to ILLEGAL – va- riety, and; b) the issue itself is also en- tirely 'legal', in nature: in the sense that government's ac- tions are not just indefensible, from a purely wildlife-conser- vation point of view... but they are also, quite frankly, ILLE- GAL, from any particular per- spective you care to name. And that, by the way, brings me to around the only part the FKNK's reaction with which I actually agree. Yes, the feder- ation is quite right to accuse Birdlife Malta of 'attempting to influence the law-courts', in a case which was scheduled to commence that same day... and which, after all, BLM had filed itself: with the specific aim of overturning what it (quite rightly) regards as a 'flagrant breach of local and interna- tional law'. Now: it remains somewhat unclear to me, why the FKNK should suddenly find this par- ticular strategy so utterly 'de- plorable'... when the same fed- eration has such a long history of exerting 'undue pressure', all of its own (not just on the law-courts, by the way: but also on the Ornis Committee; the Wild Birds Regulations Unit; and pretty much every single administration of government – Labour, or Nationalist - since around 1977, at the earliest.) But let's leave that aside, for now; because the most inter- esting part comes later. Not content with having already accused Birdlife Malta, of an 'unfair tactic' it has resorted to so often itself – the FKNK went on to accuse the same organi- sation of another crime... and a REAL one, this time! So very 'real', in fact, that the federation even reported Birdlife officials to the police, for - seriously, though: if you haven't heard this already, you might think I'm making it all up - 'BEING IN POSSESSION OF A DEAD BIRD [!!!]' Yes, indeed, folks: we now have further confirmation – and from the FKNK itself, no less – that 'being in possession of a dead bird' is actually IL- LEGAL, in this country... even if (let's be honest, now) it is also what every single one of FKNK's own members - in- cluding all the officials who actually wrote that press state- ment - will eagerly wake up in the hope of doing themselves, at precisely 4 o'clock tomorrow morning. Not to mention what some Maltese hunters have already been doing – or trying to do,