“Whilst seriously condemning whatever illegality, whenever and wherever this occurs, the Federation for Hunting and Conservation – Malta (FKNK) will await the official government report in this regard before commenting further, if need be,” he said.

“This should detail the number of administrative infringements reported during the hunting open season timings and the respective percentage of the 8000 special licence holders, and the number of crimes reported which are still sub Judice again reported during the hunting open season timings and the respective percentage of the licence holders,” he continued.

“The end result will evidence how many and what percentage of the 8000 special licence holders abused their licence and committed administrative infringements, and how many and what percentage are still to be arraigned in Court for presumed committed crimes.”

FKNK also pointed out that BirdLife Malta’s “desperation” is coming after “the Court’s rejection of the two BLM Warrants of Prohibition, by means of which last-minute effort BLM tried to suspend this year’s turtle dove spring hunting season”.

“Also notwithstanding that BLM had already been defeated about the same spring hunting issue both in 2009 at the European Court of Justice and at the polls of the 2015 abrogative referendum,” he concluded, referring back to the referendum.

It has already been seven years since the referendum vote was taken, with the hunting lobby only securing 50.4% of the votes, a number which is arguably not even a great majority.

Injured Red-Footed falcons, European turtle doves and purple herons were among the 208 illegal hunting victims during this year’s spring hunting season.

“During the same period, BirdLife Malta recovered a total of 18 shot birds belonging to 15 protected species whilst Environmental Protection Unit (EPU) police retrieved a further 16 illegal hunting casualties,” it continued. 

What do you make of Micallef’s comments?