Fighting Over Birds in Malta

Malta is in the international birding spotlight for allowing bird hunting during spring migration. The dispute is getting nasty and personal.

Malta is an important location for migrating birds, visited by species from dozens of European countries. This is important because, despite its membership in the European Union, Malta breaks EU laws every year by allowing hunters to take migratory birds in the spring.

Spring is a particularly damaging time to hunt birds because they are on their way to their breeding territory. A bird that is hunted in spring has no opportunity to reproduce that year; a bird that is taken in the fall may well leave offspring who will reproduce in later years. Each year, there is an outcry against spring hunting in Malta—but the hunting continues.

Now the fight is heating up. The European Commission has announced that it will take Malta to the European Court of Justice to force an end to the spring hunt. Meanwhile, though the vast majority of Maltese are thought to fully support an end to the hunt, a small minority are willing to go to surprising lengths to illustrate their opposition: in the past vandals have destroyed trees at nature reserves, and now three cars belonging to BirdLife Malta volunteers have been torched and destroyed.

The mindset of these criminals is beyond me. I couldn’t shoot a bird, let alone shoot one illegally, or set fire someone’s car because they say I can’t shoot one. It looks like pure selfishness is way ahead of common sense here. It’s scary to think these individuals have firearms as well as fire.

What do you think of the situation in Malta? Start a discussion.