Hunters sent only 10 SMSes

The Malta Environment and Planning Authority, MEPA, confirmed with sister newspaper Illum that it only received 10 SMEs during the hunting season in spring. This means that technically during this period, hunters only caught 10 birds. This amount is a far cry from what Birdlife reported.

During the hunting season in last spring, Birdlife sent “watchdogs” to monitor several areas around Malta. It documented 765 accidents, 1,645 shots and it recorded 378 illegalities. This all took place in a period of six days. Asked to comment about MEPA’s report, Tolga Temuge, Executive Director of Birdlife Malta simply said that “authorities do not have real knowledge about the amount of quails and turtledove killed by licensed hunters.”

MEPA admitted to not knowing how many of the 10 SMSes were received from either Malta or Gozo. “The information we have is according to the identity card or mobile numbers which were registered in the system.  These do not necessarily indicate that the hunting was done in Malta or Gozo,” MEPA said.

Temuge says that all this shows that the spring derogation was not cancelled as it was supposed to be and asked to by the Birds Directive. “The Prime Minister surrendered to the aggressive lobbying in favour of the hunting,” Temuge said.