Hunters target EU-approved environmental stewards Gaia Foundation

The IVA movement campaigning for spring hunting has targeted a local organic agriculture organisation in a bid to curry favour with voters for the upcoming 11 April referendum to abrogate the spring hunting season.

IVA spokespersons Darren Caruana and Nyal Xuereb claimed that the Gaia Foundation, which runs the Elysium Complex in Ghajn Tuffieha and has been a caretaker of the surrounding environment, was “hiding an obscene abuse of environmental law”.

Caruana and Xuereb said that hunters had been thrust in a negative light by those campaigning against the derogation from the EU ban on spring hunting, while “making an enormous effort to keep under wraps the foreign people employed with them to run the campaign against hunting.”

The two hunters said they wanted action to be taken against Gaia Foundation, in which they alleged that indigenous trees had been cut down, when these were protected by law.

The Gaia Foundation is currently managing three sites that fall within the Natura 2000 Network, Ghajn Tuffieha, Ramla, Gozo, and Majjistral Park. Natura 2000 is a network of European natural heritage sites that are managed in accordance with European laws, policies and guidelines.

The two hunters demanded MEPA to investigate the tree felling, saying they would present photographic evidence of the ‘destruction’.

While chiming in that the ‘No’ campaign was replete with “ironies”, it was only in 2010 that three hunters were ordered to carry out 300 hours’ community service after pleading guilty to destroying 104 trees from the Foresta 2000 park.