The spring hunting season for quail opened this morning on Gozo and Malta.

The Committee Against Bird Slaughter (CABS) said that more than 3000 hunters are permitted by he government to shoot Quail until the 30th of April, “or until the bag limit of 2400 birds is registered on the Wild Bird Regulation Units farcical reporting system.!

CABS went on to say that despite ongoing infringement proceedings from the European Commission regarding any form of spring hunting, the decision on whether or not to also open a hunting season for Turtle Dove on 20th of April is still pending.

Hunting is allowed from 2 hours before sunrise until 12:00 noon. The use of electronic decoys remains strictly forbidden. However, CABS said that, “during night surveys conducted by our teams we have already recorded dozens of electronic callers for quail and wader species.”

CABS stated that its teams “will of course be on patrol monitoring compliance with the hunting law and the migration of other protected species such as Marsh and Montagu’s harriers, honey buzzards, hoopoes, cuckoos and bee-eaters, to name just a few, which will be passing the islands in the coming days and weeks.”

It explained that “many protected species are heavily targeted on Malta only to end up in private taxidermy collections.”

Photo: CABS

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