The Malta Environment and Planning Authority’s publication of a consultation paper covering a code of conduct on the management of the invasive alien plant species, which took place on Tuesday, is commendable.

Over the past couple of years I have carried out a laborious manual task to uncover and restore a rock-cut irrigation channel on our agricultural land at Simblija, Rabat. This is part of our agricultural heritage. I estimate the channel is more than 100 years old. It had been covered with soil and other debris after trenching works had been carried out by a utility company some time in the mid-1990s and has since lay unused.

In managing to uncover the channel, I also had to manually and painstakingly remove and destroy a number of prickly pear trees which had invaded the area.

On precisely the day when the Mepa consultation paper was issued (see Mepa Guidelines On Countering Alien Plant Species, September 26), some vandal or vindictive person planted a number of prickly pear trees next to the duct. If permitted to grow, those trees will invade the surrounding land and will block and hide the channel once again for many more decades.

Needless to say, I reported the incident to the police.

Did Mepa forget one more species from its list of invasive species? But then perhaps this will be addressed in a consultation paper about the vandalic species.