The government said yesterday it has no plan to allow any bird trapping in 2009 but a spokesman would not specify whether the decision is a permanent one.
"No trapping season is envisaged for 2009," was the response by the government spokesman when asked whether trapping will be discontinued for good.
Informally, a senior government official said the government's stand is to stick to the deal with Brussels and not allow trapping any more.
However, when asked for a definitive official answer, the response from the Prime Minister's Office was to refer to a legal notice issued last August.
The legal notice had outlined the hunting and trapping seasons for 2008 and said that the season for trapping of finches, golden plover and song thrushes would end yesterday while trapping of turtle doves and quails ended on October 30.
Nonetheless, a spokesman for the European Commission said the EU "understands that the Maltese authorities have concluded that no further wild specimens may be captured".
Which would mean an end to trapping as from today, as was widely expected.
In fact, the Commission said it is satisfied that Malta stuck to its pre-accession deal giving the country a special concession to continue trapping for some years, despite the fact that the practice is banned in the rest of the EU.
Still, the hunters' federation said last week, when announcing that it would be returning to the Ornis committee in January, that it plans to keep lobbying for both trapping and spring hunting.
"Yesterday I saw grown men crying because of this situation. It is absurd because, as it turns out, we are going to be allowed to kill some birds but not to trap them alive. Although we will try to continue playing by the rules as much as possible, when the going gets tough, the tough get going. We are prepared to give BirdLife and the government a run for their money," a spokesman for the federation said.
The federation said it had prepared a dossier offering satisfactory solutions on the future of trapping and asked for meetings with both the Prime Minister and the Labour Party.
The concession Malta was given covered the trapping of seven species of birds until the end of this year. According to a pretext used by the Maltese authorities, the concession was needed to allow more time to carry out studies to "ensure sufficient genetic diversity of the captive species".
The arrangement consisted in a number of conditions, including the establishment of an Ornis Committee, the registration of all trapping sites, the commissioning of a number of studies and the introduction of a captive breeding project.
A Commission spokesman said that Brussels is satisfied with the progress achieved by Malta in this area and is assured that all the conditions tied to the transitional period on trapping have now been met.
"The Commission believes that the conditions referred to in the Accession Treaty in relation to the temporary derogation to permit the trapping of seven species of birds have been met," the spokesman said.
One of the initiatives referred to by the Commission was the captive bird breeding project in Għammieri.
Besides hosting offspring, birds are ringed and data is recorded on every particular specimen while private enthusiasts are also being given the opportunity to improve their skills and their aviaries.
A monitoring report on the project was submitted on a regular basis to the European Commission since 2006, along with separate studies required by Brussels.