The Federation for Hunting & Conservation – Malta (FKNK) Secretary General Lino Farrugia said in a statement today that “despite never having been recommended by the Ornis Committee to date, this year the FKNK were outvoted, when at the last Ornis Committee Meeting it was proposed that the September afternoon hunting ‘curfew,’ imposed by Government for the past 5 years should be retained.

“This afternoon ban, only serves to give more freedom of movement to abolitionist organisations whilst depriving the Maltese hunters from participating in a full open hunting season as opposed to their counterparts in all other European Member States for whom an open season is an open season.”

The FKNK said that “the Committee therefore decided to recommend to the Minister that a ‘curfew,’ albeit maybe with revised timings, should still be imposed this autumn.”

The Federation stated that “Government’s decision could be intent on pleasing BirdLife Malta (BLM) even more if their request to extend such curfew to October is accepted. The Meeting outvoted a further proposal for ‘collective punishment’ should the recommended ‘curfew’ be somehow violated.”

“This Committee’s decision to impose the ‘curfew,’ may be, in the FKNK’s opinion, inconclusive, since before the final vote was taken on whether or not a ‘curfew’ should be imposed, three previous related votes which proposed different ‘curfews’ did not manage to obtain a majority vote,” the FKNK said.

“The Meeting also voted in support of having fixed open hunting seasons as from this autumn/winter,” the Federation said. “The Committee turned down another BLM proposal to further hassle and burden hunters during the autumn open hunting season.”

Live-finch capturing will most likely not be permitted

The FKNK said that it “is under the impression that live-finch capturing for this autumn is not a likely possibility, since Government fears it is not adequately prepared to apply the relative derogation in time, this topic, together with the application of derogation to permit live-capturing of huntable species this autumn/winter, will be the agenda items for discussion at the next Ornis Committee meeting set for August.”

The FKNK added that it has already, quite some time ago, supplied Government, the Opposition and the Malta Ornis Committee with adequate proposals and tools for the correct application of derogations to permit the Maltese traditional socio-cultural recreations of live-bird capturing in autumn/winter.

The FKNK concluded that for the benefit of its members it will continue to “work constructively in order that any further “gold-plating” (non-EU requisites) such as the autumn curfew will not reoccur and also to work incessantly such that live-finch capturing will have a correct derogation applied in the spirit of and in line with the PL/FKNK working group discussions since 2010 and the joint statement by both parties dated the 4th March 2013.”

Permalink: FKNK advises that autumn hunting ‘curfew’ is to stay