Give wildlife a chance? No!

It would have been an interesting conundrum, if it actually happened. 

OK, try and picture the scene. As we all know, there will be a referendum on April 11 to decide whether or not the practice of hunting in spring should be allowed to continue. Meanwhile, in the background, something called the Ornis Committee got together this week to take the same decision regarding the 2015 season… which, under normal circumstances, would open just a few days after the referendum.

This, incidentally, happens every year, and the outcome invariably disproves all those investment banking ads on TV. When it comes to things like spring hunting, it seems that the past really is a guarantee of the future. Same decision by Ornis, every single time. No exceptions, ever.

But there is a small difference this time round. The verdict of the Ornis Committee has to be taken as provisional, pending the referendum result. Still, a decision must be taken… even if it may yet be superseded by events.

So what’s it going to be, folks? Oh, I can’t bear to look. The suspense is killing me. They’re opening the envelope right now, and the winner is… drums rolling… 

Well, I’ll be damned. It’s a yes to spring hunting. Again. Just like every single other time the Ornis Committee has ever met to take the same decision since its inception. Honestly, who would have ever guessed?

But just imagine, for a second, that it reached the opposite verdict instead. Imagine it decided NOT to allow spring hunting this year… just weeks before people went to the polling booth to vote on an issue that would technically have already been decided for them by others.

How would that have impacted the campaign, I wonder? Certainly it would have robbed the ‘No’ camp of one of their most central (and quite frankly indisputable) arguments: i.e., that the official bodies entrusted with such decisions have all along been in cahoots with the hunting lobby for political purposes. 

In so doing, it would have all-but obviated the need for this referendum in the first place. After all, the only reason this was deemed at all necessary is that all other doors have consistently been slammed shut in the country’s face for years. 

Ornis could easily have reversed all this in the beat of a turtle-dove’s wings. Suddenly, the flavour of the referendum would have changed. Voting ‘No’ would no longer seem quite as defiant an act as it does today. There would be no further need to rage against a political consensus that exists only to further the interests of politicians, at the expense of Malta’s already depleted wildlife. The entire exercise would have been reduced to the level of futility: a symbolic act to seal a decision that had already been taken anyway.

OK, you might well be thinking that this proposition of mine – this outrageous and fanciful idea that Ornis might actually have surprised us all by taking the sensible decision – exists only in some imaginary parallel universe of my own fantasy. No one in his right mind would realistically expect Ornis to do things any other way. It’s as predictable as a pothole after rain, or the next political scandal now showing at a theatre near you. 

Not without good reason: like so many caged birds, the Ornis Committee also has to sing for its supper. And the tune the present government likes to hear from its cage is exactly the same tune it was trained to sing by the preceding administration: the Tweety-bird equivalent of “Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full.” 

So yes: to imagine an Ornis Committee which took its decisions on the basis of the scientific data placed at its disposal – instead of to blindly rubberstamp the policy of a government that doesn’t give a hoot about birds anyway – is clearly to live in cloud cuckoo land. 

Yet when you look at the scientific advice this committee had been given prior to taking this decision… when you consider, for instance, the conclusions of the Wild Birds Regulations Unit report, which found that turtle dove has declined in Europe by 77% since 1980, and is currently at its lowest levels ever… or that the number of quail migrating over Malta in autumn is actually higher than in spring (thus annihilating the argument that autumn is ‘not a satisfactory solution’ for hunters)… and then, when you view these facts against the backdrop of an anomalous decision that didn’t come with any justification or even explanation attached… suddenly, the opposite picture swims into view.  

It is actually the Ornis Committee, along with the political establishment whose will it exists to uphold, that inhabits a fantasy universe. Decisions such as this go to great lengths to shut the world of reality out: they ignore facts and figures, refuse to acknowledge any evidence or data that might contradict the committee’s own preconceived notions; and instead, they stick doggedly to a pre-rehearsed script which bears no resemblance whatsoever to reality of the situation it supposedly exists to regulate. 

Hate to say it, but these are all symptoms of delusion. They suggest that the decision-making bodies of this country – certainly with regard to this issue, and arguably others too – consider their own biases and wishful thinking as a more reliable indicator of policy direction than the consensus of world scientific opinion.

From the same perspective, it is the people who rightly express frustration at this state of affairs that have both feet firmly planted on the ground. And personally speaking, I find this image disturbing. It is as though the people who speak in the name of common sense in this country have to constantly struggle against a tide of absurdity pulling in the opposite direction.

Anyhow: as things stand, we all know that Ornis passed up a unique opportunity to rewrite history this week. This takes us away from our fantasy world, and plonks us back in an increasingly ugly reality. It amply proves what we have all along known anyway: i.e., that such decisions are invariably taken for political reasons unrelated to any of the conservation issues surrounding hunting. More significantly, it illustrates that this situation will never change because of any institutional policy-shift on the part of the authorities… no matter how many solid arguments or scientific reports you present them with.

By the same token, it also reminds us why this referendum is ultimately so important… at least, for those who actually care about such things as Malta’s biodiversity. By pressing ahead (yet again) with a decision that flies in the face of all scientific advice, Ornis has illustrated the precise mechanics of a pattern that has effectively wiped out substantial proportions of Malta’s resident breeding bird population in the past 70 years.

It was in fact during the decades after World War Two that serious declines in bird populations began to be registered in Malta. There is evidence, for instance, that quail – one of the two species legally shot in Malta in spring – was once a resident breeder. Joe Sultana and Charles Gauci (New Guide to the Birds of Malta) observe in a footnote that “[quail] once bred regularly according to previous authorities. Scattered pairs still bred in the forties and early fifties (Gibb 1951 and Roberts).”

The situation had changed dramatically by the time the book came out in 1982: “A few attempt to summer or to winter, but successful breeding is usually prevented by human interference. The last known breeding records are of a nest with five newly hatched young at Faqqanija in early June 1972, and another with eggs in a cornfield in Xaghra, Gozo in June 1976 – destroyed while harvesting.”

Much the same is true for the turtle dove, and the correlation with hunting is a good deal clearer. “A few birds are often present in summer and sometimes attempt to breed in overgrown areas,” Sultana and Gauci report. “In 1956 a pair bred at Lunzjata but the pair was shot and the single nestling robbed [sic]. At the end of May or early June one or two males may be heard crooning and observed indulging in the brief soaring display flight. This activity was more in evidence in 1981, the first year of the introduction of a closed season from 22 May. Pairs were reported attempting to breed in Buskett, Girgenti, Mizieb and Lunzjata (Gozo) but successful breeding could not be confirmed. Most of the birds were eventually illegally shot.”

Both birds, then, used to regularly breed in Malta (quail more than turtle dove by all accounts) until their numbers dwindled to almost nothing in the years after the war… which just happened to also coincide with an explosion in the number of licensed hunters in Malta, following economic reforms that made gun ownership more affordable. 

This trend escalated in the 1970s, in step with further increases to the hunting population. But, oh, look: as soon as limits were placed on a previously unlimited, year-round hunting season in 1981, there was a brief revival. And when, in 2008, the spring season was stopped for two years pending the European Court of Justice case, the difference could be felt almost instantly:

“Herons are staying longer in our reserves, no longer scared away by incessant gunshots,” André Raine, BirdLife Malta’s Conservation Manager, said in April 2008.

“Flocks of turtle doves (gamiema) are grouping in areas like Mizieb and then joining together to continue their migration, something we have never witnessed before. But perhaps the most significant fact is that for the first time ever on record, a pair of coots (tigiega tal-bahar) have bred on the Maltese islands, specifically at is-Simar Nature Reserve run by BirdLife Malta... furthermore, black-winged stilts (Fras-servjent) have been observed preparing a nest site at Ghadira Nature Reserve…”

Sadly, we were not given the opportunity to observe the long-term effects a permanent break from spring shooting might have had on Malta’s birdlife. The season was promptly reopened in 2010, and… bang! Back we all were, in the usual scenario where migrating birds are given no chance at all to find a foothold on the ecological ladder. 

It seems we have ignored all the lessons the experience of recent history should have taught us about wildlife conservation. We obstinately refused (and still refuse) to acknowledge an undeniable correlation between the anomaly whereby hunting is permitted during this critical time-period, and the wholesale depletion of Malta’s natural avian heritage that inevitably followed as a consequence.

And, oh, look: having resisted facing up to this reality throughout all these years, we’ve just gone and done it again. To hell with scientific data, to hell with the facts that have been staring us all in the face for decades, to hell with everything. The only important thing is that we stick to the approved political script, and defend spring hunting at all costs. 

Faced with such stubbornness, wildlife clearly doesn’t stand a chance in hell. So I’ll be thinking of this referendum as a way of giving it that chance, when I vote on April 11.