More opposition to hunter arrogance, xenophobia and callous shooting of birds and ranger

The Times editorial of today, and I.M. Beck's weekly article, deal with the latest illegal hunting incidents, the arrogance and xenophobia of the hunters' federation, and the shooting in the face of a ranger by a hunter last Monday. The Times editor, among other things, writes:

"The vast majority of right-thinking Maltese deplore the bullying antics of hunters. They are especially revolted by the illegal hunting carried out by a sizeable minority. Few would therefore have resisted the feeling of schadenfreude as the so-called Federation for Hunting and Conservation (sic) piled one public relations disaster on the other in its reaction to the fortnight-long Raptor Monitoring Camp that has just ended.

The language used at a press conference by the secretary of the federation to describe members of the Committee Against Bird Slaughter (CABS), a German-based group of bird watchers, was ill-judged, intemperate in the extreme and utterly unacceptable. This led inevitably to members of CABS being physically and verbally harassed by hunters on the ground - being called 'Nazis' and pelted with stones. There were also reports of incidents where both male and female members were subjected to acts of indecent exposure and to others being threatened with weapons.

If the leadership of the hunting federation speaks of 'foreign interference' and 'extremists' and fans xenophobia, is it any wonder if the swaggering arrogance of men armed with shotguns in the rank and file is translated into acts of overt intimidation? If the federation feared that the presence of the Raptor Monitoring Camp would expose the blatant acts of illegal hunting which took place, they were right to be worried. Bird watchers witnessed over 200 incidents of illegal hunting and trapping during the 14-day camp, including the shooting of 109 protected birds".

To the above I would add that a growing number of Maltese people are finally getting to deplore all unnecessary murder of birds just for the "fun" of it. More and more Maltese people are finally getting to see hunting for what it actually is: as definitely and unquestionably the murder of sentient and harmless birds. Therefore, I believe that I.M. Beck, also in today's The Times, speaks for several Maltese people, when in his article entitled "Now ban it", he says:

"Hunting, I mean. What is it going to take, somebody getting killed? (Actually lots are already being killed - that they are birds and not human makes no difference). Not that there haven't been hunting accidents which have resulted in someone's death, of course, but you know what I mean.

First we had the repeated spectacle of protests by hunters turning aggressive but restraining themselves to overt threats and minimal property damage. Then we had journalists being beaten - and, yes, one of them was my son, which is why I'm strong on this one. Then we had environmentalists threatened and called all manner of names, including 'Nazis' (echoed with apparent relish by It-Torca (a Maltese language newspaper)).

Now we've had someone, a living, breathing, human being, shot, luckily without lasting damage. Whether this is because the shooter who was ultra-negligent was lucky or whether it is because s/he was a lousy shot is debatable - suffice it to say that the reaction from the one who fired the shot was a hasty retreat, combined with threats and insults.

I have it on good authority (my son, who knows the guy) that Mr Ray Vella, the latest victim of the hunting fraternity's bonhomie and goodness, is one of the world's all-round decent blokes. When the offspring met with him recently to cover the thuggish vandalism wreaked on the tree-planting project Mr Vella oversees, he was more concerned about the attack on Ben (my son) than on the destruction his project had suffered.

Now his thanks is to have been shot, accidentally or otherwise (and I can't put my hand on my heart and come down on the side of either option, though, emotionally, I know where I'm heading) and then insulted and threatened.

Great, the Federation of Bird-Killing Conservationists, or whatever it is they delude themselves that they are, has expressed its regret. Big whoop: They can take their regret and do with it what they please (thankfully we have been spared the hunter's federation's pathetic "BirdLife did it").

Enough is enough: People can't be allowed to go around carrying guns anymore".