FKNK blasts BirdLife for advocating ‘collective punishment’

The hunter’s federation FKNK has insisted that, while illegal shooting of protected birds is unacceptable, it is unjust to call for collective punishment.

FKNK was responding to Birdlife Malta’s repeated calls on the government to close the hunting season. The organisation says that over 25 protected birds have been shot down since the start of the autumn hunting season on 1 September. On Friday it revealed that a honey buzzard had been shot down over St Edward’s College in Cospicua. The injured bird was found by students attending a live-in. A similar incident in 2015 had led the PM to close the season prematurely but there was no such reaction this time round.

“The illegal acts by a few individuals who persist in taking protected bird species from the wild has no place in a civilised country. Similarly unjust, is BirdLife Malta’s inflated crusade in its call for application of the illegal legislation of collective punishment, although until a few days it had been denying that it was asking this from the Prime Minister,” FKNK said yesterday.

“Collective punishment, which punishes the majority of the innocent, is illegal, and such action was illegal in 2007, in 2014 and in 2015, when the government had closed the hunting season,” it said.

The FKNK insisted on its absolute condemnation of any act of unlawful taking involving birds, while saying it is surprised that no-one has been apprehended and prosecuted in connection with such acts. It said it “understands and appreciates the good work of the police and is always ready to help whenever any relative investigations are undertaken from time to time. However, the FKNK is convinced that BLM will persist with exaggerations of such facts, as a result of which the Maltese and Gozitan hunters have been temporarily deprived, without solid scientific basis, of the traditional turtle dove spring hunt.”

Finally, the FKNK recalled that the revision of fines and penalties does not include a reduction in fines and penalties for the illegal taking of birds on Schedule I (strictly protected species) and in Schedule IX (species considered as ‘charismatic’) of the regulations.