A court has turned down a request by a conservation group to stop the spring hunting season for turtle dove.

Judge Giovanni Grixti revoked the injunction he had provisionally upheld, thus greenlighting the spring hunting season for quail and turtle dove. 

Birdlife had filed an application for a warrant of prohibitory injunction on April 3 against the Environment Minister, the Gozo Minister, their Permanent Secretaries and the State Advocate.

The NGO said it had filed the application, signed by lawyers Claire Bonello and Martin Farrugia, because the turtle dove is considered a vulnerable species by the EU.

This decision by the court means that the government can now issue a legal notice setting out the length of the hunting season.

Previously, the hunters' federation (FKNK) said the Ornis Committee, the government’s consultative committee on hunting, had voted in favour of the proposal it put forward to recommend that the government allows turtle dove and quail hunting this spring. 

The recommendation was to allow quail hunting from April 10 to 30 and Turtle Dove hunting from April 17 to 30, both days included, starting two hours before sunrise to midday.  

'Forum shopping'

The respondents argued that Ornis Committee had recommended opening of the spring hunting season within identical parameters as it had done last year. 

This meant that Birdlife’s request this year was “simply a recycled version” of that application and the court should not tolerate “forum shopping.”

The application for a warrant of prohibitory injunction was filed in proceedings where the derogation exercised by the relative authorities to allow Spring hunting was being contested. 

A similar move had been turned down by the court last year. 

When doing so the court took note of a report drawn up by the Wild Birds Regulations Unit (WBRU) which concluded that “….the Turtle dove reference population improved its short term trend status from Decreasing to Stable ….and remained Stable in the long term trend.”

'No change in circumstances'

When delivering his decision on this year’s request, Mr Justice Grixti observed that the situation as to the decline in population of the species remained unchanged. 

That was confirmed by the WBRU in its February 2023 update to the report.

Consequently, that meant that the situation was “identical” to that prevailing last year.

It was evident that there was “no change in circumstances” justifying Birdlife’s right to put forward another request for an injunction to stop opening of the season. 

The court thus upheld the preliminary plea put forward by the respondents and revoked its previous decree whereby the injunction had been provisionally upheld.