BirdLife Malta has asked a court to stop the spring hunting season for turtle dove, arguing that government authorisation was illegal and had no basis in science.
A request for a warrant of prohibitory injunction against the government was filed on Monday morning.
Malta’s spring hunting season opened on Sunday morning while the hunting for turtle dove is set to go ahead between April 17 and 30 with a national bag limit of 1,500 birds. There had been a moratorium on the hunting of turtle dove since 2017, however the ORNIS committee voted to lift it last month.
BirdLife said it is requesting a judicial assessment on how this year’s spring hunting season was permitted.
In a press conference outside the law courts in Valletta, BirdLife Malta president Darryl Grima said that the legal notice permitting this year’s spring hunting season for turtle dove went against the European Birds Directive, which supersedes any local law.
“Maltese courts have the authority and responsibility to decide on any local actions that could be in breach of European Directives,” he said.
“The government crossed the line when opening the hunting season for a vulnerable species in a pitch for votes irrespective of scientific data and also in clear breach of the Birds Directive,” he said.
“We are asking the courts to intervene with urgency and close the season.”
BirdLife CEO Mark Sultana said that the ORNIS Committee, which recommends how the hunting season should be opened is “acting as the government’s puppet”.
“During the last ORNIS committee meeting held a few days before the general election, we saw the committee vote for the reopening of a spring hunting season for turtle dove based on non-scientific evidence presented by the FKNK (the hunters' federation),” he said.
“Hunters do not care about a declining species and we’ve seen this in how they lobbied for a hunting season for common quail to still open during peak turtle dove migration, with turtle dove hunting continuing illegally and indiscriminately.”
Pointing out that turtle dove has been classed as vulnerable by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, BirdLife’s head of conservation Nicholas Barbara said that no documents prepared by hunters could negate the fact that turtle doves were a species in decline.
An EU Task force that met on March 18 advised a zero take approach to turtles doves in 2022, he added.
“The government is failing its obligations to protect the species as well as ignoring the advice of international experts.”
Sultana added that a second referendum on spring hunting was “still on the cards” and that the NGO was working on gathering the “substantial resources” required to forge ahead with this plan.