Hunters are being urged not to shoot down protected birds and follow restrictive COVID measures as the government announced the opening of a spring hunting season for later this month.  

In a statement, the government on Monday announced that the spring hunting season for quail will open on April 10 and will run until April 30.  

Hunting will be allowed from two hours before sunrise until noon, including on Fridays, weekends, and public holidays. 

The national quota was set at 2,400 quail, half that of 2020. No restrictions have been set on how many quail an individual hunter can bag. 

Quail hunting, the government said, was by its very nature, a solitary activity. Health directives and restrictions issued by the authorities should be obeyed at all times and hunters are no exception, the government added.

The season will come at the tail end of the government’s imposed soft lockdown. 

The decision to open the season follows the government’s own consultative expert committee's recommendation last month.  

This year’s hunting season will overlap with the migration of protected turtle doves over the island.

Conservationist members of the so-called Ornis committee had proposed dates for an earlier season to avoid the migration period - but others argued against opening it while Malta is in a quasi-lockdown period, which is due to end on April 11. 

For the past four years, hunters have only been allowed to hunt quail in spring, and that will remain this case this season. 

Spring hunting is not allowed by the EU’s Birds Directive but member states can apply an exception, known as a derogation, which has to be justified with the commission afterwards.

Turtle doves are considered a “near threatened” species across the EU as population numbers have been steadily decreasing since the 1980s.