The call of the wild

Call me delusional, but one of the more disappointing aspects of the spring hunting debate so far has been the lack of any real discussion about the actual ecological impact of hunting in Malta.

From a campaign point of view, I can more or less understand why the ‘No’ lobby would approach the issue from a ‘social justice’ perspective instead: presenting it as a fight to reclaim the countryside, for instance; or a constant stream of reminders of how disgracefully hunters have behaved in the past. 

But to me, such concerns are actually quite peripheral. I will vote ‘No’ in next Saturday’s referendum, not because I was once (several times, actually) chased out of Buskett by a bunch of gun-toting troglodytes in the 1980s… nor because of the constant threats and political blackmail to which the hunting lobby has consistently resorted over the decades... nor even because of the sometimes outrageous acts of violence and vandalism perpetrated by individual hunters on the persons and property of all who have opposed or defied them over the years.

Do these things annoy me? Yes, of course they do. But nowhere near as much as the sheer damage caused by this activity to Malta’s entire natural heritage in the last few decades. This country could be a paradise for migratory birds in spring. Instead, we have wantonly and willingly turned it into a graveyard. So I will vote ‘No’ next Saturday for only one reason to speak of: because I sincerely believe that spring hunting is a perversion of the natural order which has caused untold damage to Malta’s wildlife over the years. 

And its consequences have been serious. We have literally permitted the wholesale eradication of birds that once bred in not-inconsiderable numbers in Malta… including apex predators like Peregrine falcons, Kestrels and Barn owls. From that perspective, I see no actual need to get side-tracked by other, ancillary issues. Protecting breeding birds has always been reason enough to ban hunting in spring… at least, to me.

But ticking away in the background is this underlying assumption that the broader Maltese public just doesn’t care enough about ‘The Environment’ to be swayed by environmental arguments alone. Certainly, the typical Maltese voter has never cared enough to base his or her voting intentions on such issues as spring hunting… which in turn explains why hunters (who, by way of contrast, do care very much indeed) have always found it so easy to bend political parties to their will.

There is, I suspect, some truth to the above generalisation. But a generalisation it remains; and one that is also based on a rather lazy and dubious national stereotype to boot. How often have we been told that the ‘typical Maltese person’ tends to be: A) confrontational and somewhat tribal in outlook; B) ignorant and uninterested in anything remotely conceptual or intellectual, and; C) selfish, greedy and overwhelmingly concerned only with his or her own pocket? 

Well, on closer scrutiny this perception doesn’t quite hold against to the reality we can all see with our own eyes. Let’s give ourselves a little credit for a change, shall we? The ‘typical Maltese person’ also howls in horror and indignation each time a story appears in the papers about a mistreated puppy-dog, or a pussy-cat that was dumped in a well. The ‘typical Maltese person’ digs deep into his or her pockets, and donates generously even to somewhat undeserving animal charities that can’t afford to pay their water bills. Likewise, the ‘typical Maltese person’ invariably expresses anger and disgust, each time a man who whipped a horse to death (or, for that matter, beat his wife to a pulp) is let off with a suspended sentence by the law courts. 

As far as I can see, that is not exactly the sort of behaviour one associates with a national culture of greed, selfishness, ignorance and sheer insensitivity.

Besides: times have changed since the days when the few people who spoke out about birds in this country were widely regarded as crackpots and troublemakers. Today, many of the people I know who once pooh-poohed environmentalists as a bunch of ‘tree-huggers’ and ‘do-gooders’ have conspicuously changed their tune. I happen to see this all the time, because most of the people in my particular age-group are now parents of young and not-so-young children of their own. And parenthood has strange effects on people. It tends to breed instant consciousness of the fact that the Malta we are bequeathing to our descendants is manifestly poorer than the Malta we ourselves enjoyed when we were children. 

Fact of the matter is that Maltese people do care about their environment. And against this backdrop I would expect the occasional argument to defend the natural environment purely for its own sake… and not just as an extension of some other, unrelated social-political-economic issues. Personally, I would have liked to hear a little about how the loss of so many resident breeding bird species may have affected the ecosystem as a whole. Up until the late 1940s and 1950s, predatory birds such as the Barn owl and the Kestrel – not to mention the Peregrine falcon, for which Malta was once famous – were regular breeders. They have all since been wiped out… which also means that Malta doesn’t actually have any natural predators left (except perhaps the weasel, which is rare and limited only to a few localities). 

This sort of imbalance is certain to have repercussions, and in our case I think we can all work out the consequences for ourselves. Owls and falcons prey chiefly on smaller birds, rodents and reptiles. Pigeons, for instance, constitute a considerable part of the Peregrine falcon’s diet. And oh look: Malta now has a pigeon infestation that is causing considerable (and in some cases unprecedented) problems to various localities. 

Could it be a coincidence, that Malta’s urban pigeon population sky-rocketed beyond all control the moment its only natural predator, the Peregrine falcon, was wiped out as a local breeding species? I think not. And pigeons are not even the more conspicuous of our home-grown pest problems. Owls and smaller falcons like kestrels are particularly fond of mice and small rats. There is, in fact, no greater natural foe of the rat than the Barn owl. But my oh my, how very surprising. The last known breeding pair of Barns owls was shot in the 1980s… and since then, Malta has duplicated the experience of mediaeval Hamelin (only without any equivalent of the Pied Piper). 

Odd, isn’t it, that the moment we successfully hunted the Barn owl to extinction, our national rat population simply exploded beyond all form of control? And of course, no one ever sees any connection between the recent emergence of potentially lethal diseases such as Typhus fever – transmitted by the flea of the sewer rat (Rattus norvegicus) – and the fact we have utterly obliterated that animal’s only natural predator from our list of resident breeding birds.

Meanwhile, there has been sporadic talk about reintroducing the Barn owl as a form of natural pest control – like so many other countries have successfully done with analogous predators, to tremendous success – but why have we never actually gone ahead and done it? Simple, really. We instinctively all know that with thousands of hunters roaming around the countryside in spring, the reintroduced owls would quite frankly never stand a chance.

Then there are all the other, often unpredictable benefits of restoring the natural predator/prey relationship. I refer to the phenomenon known scientifically as a ‘trophic cascade’, which may require a small digression. 

I first heard the term in connection with the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone Park in the USA in 1995. George Monbiot, the environmentalist author and Guardian columnist, wrote a book (‘Feral’) about the long-term effects of this initiative; and just to give an indication of how utterly remarkable and unexpected these effects were, the blurb on the dust-jacket claims that wolves somehow managed to ‘change the course of rivers’.

How could that possibly be? The complete answer may be too long for this humble article; but to keep things simple, let’s just say that it revolves around the concept that natural predators are indispensable to maintaining the natural equilibrium upon which all living things depend. 

Wild wolves had been driven to extinction in most of America several decades earlier – in fact no wolf had been sighted in Yellowstone in well over 70 years. And the immediate, short-term effect of this natural imbalance was the lack of any natural control on the population of wild deer. Yellowstone’s deer were therefore left to reproduce uncontrolled and undisturbed; with the result that entire valleys and plains within the park were virtually stripped bare of vegetation. Entire habitats for smaller animals – not least, birds – were lost to the grazing habits of larger and larger herds. And human efforts to control deer population seemed to have no lasting effect.

But wolves? That was a different story. The newly reintroduced wolves started to prey on deer, thinning the herds ever so slightly… but that, it seems, was not the real reason for the subsequent ripple effect (or ‘trophic cascade’). The presence of an apex predator radically altered the deer’s behaviour patterns. One simple effect was that deer started to avoid certain parts of the park altogether… areas where they could be easily ambushed and killed... with the result that grass, trees and undergrowth were free to grow back. 

And grow back they did, with surprising speed… providing natural habitat for lots of smaller animals – including mice, voles, insects, reptiles, etc. – which in turn attracted other predators further down the food chain: foxes, badgers, birds of prey, and so forth. 

The truly remarkable and unexpected change, however, concerned the actual landscape itself. With grasslands back to their ‘natural’ levels, there was less natural erosion of topsoil. The roots of trees and bushes provided greater stability for river-banks, protecting watercourses that would otherwise quickly erode and change. The resulting stability created fertile ground for more permanent fresh water ecosystems. Hence the concept of a cascade: one small change at the top of the food chain, which results in dozens of unexpected ripple effects further down the line.

Naturally I don’t expect such a breathtakingly spectacular transformation to take place here in Malta, where there is a marked lack of river-courses to be altered. But if next Saturday’s referendum does put a stop to hunting in spring, I do expect it to be a lot easier for some of the species that have been wiped out to at least reacquire a foothold somewhere on the ladder of Malta’s natural food chain. This has in fact already happened; when spring hunting was banned for just four seasons, at least two species – moorhens and swifts – started to successfully breed where they had previously tried and failed. 

With a ban on hunting in spring it would certainly be easier to emulate the experience of other countries, and reintroduce such ‘lost’ species as owls and falcons as a means of natural pest control. But that’s about as far as I’m willing to anticipate, as the whole point of a trophic cascade is its very unpredictability.

The consequences of a ‘Yes’ victory, however, are somewhat slightly easier to predict. More hunters, less breathing space for birds to settle, no chance of successful breeding, no natural predators, no pest population control, no trophic cascades… only a permanent, artificial imbalance to the ecosystem, resulting in an infinitely poorer natural heritage to bequeath to future generations. 

And that, ultimately, is what next Saturday’s choice is all about.