Għarb and San Lawrenz bird hunting: experiencing Syrian levels of gunfire and sound pollution

Last weekend, we decided to spend a peaceful and relaxing couple of days – as is customary for us – in a residential area of the attractive and usually quiet village of San Lawrenz in Gozo.

Our abode stands facing a magnificent swathe of agricultural land between San Lawrenz and Birbuba Road in Għarb – a merciful oasis-like stretch of fields surrounded by residential ribbon development with the blue sea beyond.

Early in the morning on Saturday, when the first rays of the sun had not yet appeared on the horizon, the synchronised rattling of quick-firing hunters’ guns that sounded like machine guns filled the whole air and continued uninterruptedly through to late afternoon before dusk set in.

A similar occurrence – but much earlier in the morning on Sunday – took place when the area was still covered in a dark impenetrable mantle: to be precise, when visibility was absolute zero.

Horrendous slaughter and firing of guns proceeded uninterruptedly throughout the whole day and only stopped in the early evening. The law allows “hunting to be carried out from two hours before dawn until two hours after sunset on Mondays to Saturdays”. This, it is presumed, is allowable out in the country where the shock of gunfire has no one but the poor birds to injure. Is it really allowed in a residential area where one is shocked out of one’s sleep with the loud, unbearable bangs from gunfire taking place well within the legal 200m limit?

Why are the authorities closing a blind eye to the goings-on in San Lawrenz/Għarb? Pellets from hunters rain down continually on residential roads and even on a small public playground well frequented by neighbourhood children. This is a residential location, not a remote place in the country.

And what about the unbelievable development happening in broad daylight over the last few weeks, when a 40ft container was installed as a hunters cabin in the middle of an agricultural area in plain view of the well-frequented residential roads surrounding it and less than 200m away.

Where is the Mepa permit for this and for the concrete base supporting it?

Police cars pass by frequently enough – ostensibly on patrol in the area. It is impossible for them not to have noticed. Perhaps they were too busy thinking of the pleasure ahead – of sharing early morning coffee with hunters themselves in the little hunters’ room near the remote chapel of San Dimitri, as has been observed many times.

This continuous gunfire celebration by the hunting community shattered all the peace and restfulness of the villages and its environs and was very reminiscent of gunfire as described by the media in war-torn Syria.

It is no exaggeration to say that the amount of gunpowder employed to slaughter birds transiting to northern territories would probably have been sufficient to reduce to smithereens half of what is left of Damascus or Aleppo.

Is this the sign of a civil society and eco-Gozo that the government endorses and claims?