The Federation for Hunting and Conservation – Malta (FKNK) said it has submitted its proposals for the 2024 spring hunting season for discussion at the next meeting of the Ornis Committee.

In a statement, the Federation said that the Committee must decide in this meeting whether to recommend to the Minister the proposal of the FKNK in order to apply derogations to allow the traditional hunting of turtle dove and quail in April 2024, “as well as to carry out research regarding the migration of turtle dove allowed by the tradition of trapping turtle doves during the same period.”

These proposals were listed in detail in a document submitted by the FKNK, “where the positive results regarding the sustainability of dove hunting in Malta are explained,” it said.

The FKNK said that “these results came from the surveys that it organised, with the voluntary help of a number of members, during the turtle dove hunting seasons in September 2021 and in that of 2022, as well as through the scientific study that the FKNK, again with voluntary involvement of some members, prepared during the turtle dove hunting seasons in April 2022 and in that of 2023.”

The FKNK went on to say that in the same document it “detailed the successes achieved through the FKNK Turtle Dove Project, not only in relation to the possibility of increasing Bulgaria and Kosovo with the so-called `reference population countries,’ but that the Project achieved one of its main purposes through the amount left in the wild over the years, which satisfied by far the purpose of the so-called compensatory measure.”

According to FKNK, “The BirdLife Malta report that was issued against opening spring hunting is full of inaccuracies, misconceptions, half-truths, statements that twist the facts and statistics. Therefore the FKNK published a counter report, `Critique,’ which was also presented to the Ornis Committee.

File photo: FKNK

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