Malta’s hunting lobby FKNK has expressed its disappointment at the news that there won’t be a finch trapping season this autumn.

“Will we keep going on like this, with this uncertainty over the trapping season every single year?” FKNK president Joe Perici Calascione asked. “Living in constant uncertainty isn’t right and it shouldn’t be the case.”

He said he been informed that the government’s decision not to apply for a derogation from the EU this year is because it doesn’t want to appear as though it is trying to profit politically from the ongoing personnel changes at the European Commission.

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“I urge the government to do its utmost to ensure we are in a position to maintain the little bit of trapping we have and to have some certainty over it. Other entities want us to give up and indeed it would be the easiest thing for us to give up and admit that trapping is a thing of the past, as other countries have done.”

“We don’t want to reach that stage though. Other countries have alternatives but we have nothing but the spring hunting of turtle doves and the trapping of finches. If those are removed, we might as well pack our bags and travel to another country.”

“I am convinced the parliamentary secretary [Clint Camilleri] supports us and I urge trappers to stand behind us so we can impose more pressure to apply for an EU derogation next year.”

The Ornis Committee, the government’s consultative body on hunting and trapping, yesterday voted against opening an autumn trapping season for finches. This will be the second consecutive autumn without finch trapping and comes in the wake of a judgement by the European Court of Justice that this practice is in breach of EU rules.

However, trappers have been given something of a silver lining after the Ornis Committee proposed the opening of a trapping season for golden plover and song thrush.

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BirdLife Malta questioned why the trapping season is being opened at all when the ECJ has made its stance on trapping clear and when the European Commission has already instituted infringement proceedings against Malta for allowing trappers to trap golden plover and song thrush.

It also questioned why Ornis approved decreasing the mesh size for song thrush cages to 34x34mm, following complaints by trappers that the birds were escaping from last year’s mandatory 45x45mm nets.

“Incidentally the vote passed irrespective of the fact that last year trappers declared catching the highest number of Song Thrush since 2012 when the derogation started been applied,” BirdLife said.

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