Message to Lara Boffa’s boyfriend: foxes don’t migrate through Britain en route to and from Malta
Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando should do us all a favour and stick to teeth and his state-paid personal assistant Lara Boffa, or any number of variations on that combo he could care to think of, in and out of Venice and his office at the Malta Council for Science and Technology.
The fox-hunting debate in Britain is not about conservation but about cruel sports – there are, in fact, so many foxes that they go into town and knock the dustbins over like stray dogs.
Chris Packham’s arguments against bird-shooting in Malta are not about cruelty. They are about the wanton destruction of rare beauty and about the conservation of species:
Thus in the vet’s I held in my hands one of nature’s greatest masterpieces, sleek, neat, a predator honed with a determined purpose, a synergy of beauty, form and function and gilded with the cachet of rarity. It was simply too valuable to have been wasted.
More to the point, those foxes are Britain’s. They breed there, stay there and never leave. They are not foxes migrating through Britain en route to their summer home in Malta, with hunting parties of Charleses and Camillas and their packs of hounds out to get the foxes before they reach their final destination of Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando’s garden in Wied is-Sewda.
Purely as an aside, the sort of people who are now the only ones commenting on Pullicino Orlando’s Timeline, and the nature of the comments they make, should give him a fairly accurate picture of where he now stands in the public’s regard.
Well, as long as his redneck friend Gerald has balls we can rest assured that his other friend Natius won’t be celebrating his marriage to some poor stooge anytime soon. He’s got to have them removed first.
Taghna Lkoll, Jeff – and do watch out for those pesky foxes. One of them might get your chihuahua.
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The turtle dove is uncommon in the UK because it is at it’s northernmost range there.
There is no evidence, and indeed it is exceedingly unlikely as anyone who views a map of Europe can understand, that UK populations pass through Malta thus migrating several hundreds of miles further than they need to as opposed to taking the direct route over Spain and Morocco.
Other than in the UK, it is a relatively common species and has a “least concern” IUCN conservation status.
The reasons for the population decline in some countries is connected to the changes in the usage of agricultural land which do not favour certain species, but certainly favour others with which the turtle doves may compete for breeding habitat and the like.
It’s a familiar story, the relevance of (optimistically) 30 or 40 thousand doves shot in a Maltese spring is an absolute zero to the breeding population in the UK, which according to the RSPB itself, can even be overwhelmingly negatively effected by the “rarity” (my emphasis) of a wet British summer:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/10215819/Turtle-doves-dying-out.html
More reasons for the reduction in dove numbers in the UK, for what it’s worth:
http://www.arkive.org/turtle-dove/streptopelia-turtur/
[Daphne – Well, that’s a perverse argument if I ever heard one: they’re declining in numbers anyway, so we might as well shoot them? The decline in numbers, whatever the cause, is an argument to stop shooting them.]
Bil-Malti nsejhulu “ARGUMENT BAZWI”
A lame excuse.
Do you mean that hunters shoot only at turtle doves?
That’s a good joke.
Daphne, of course conservation is important and I am personally against spring hunting. However, as bandido guapo said,according to the IUCN Red List and BirdLife International, turtle of dove and quail are a species of ‘Least Concern’ in regards to their conservation status. I think the population of turtle dove in Europe is over 20 million.
While Chris Packham has good intentions, he sometimes has tendency to over-dramatise the situation. While it is true that the turtle-dove population has dropped by 95% in the UK, this is overwhelmingly due to their habitat destruction and agricultural practices and not through hunting.
While their population has declined, it seems to have only declined so dramatically in the UK. So it’s kind of hypocritical to come to Malta and complain about turtle doves and quails (he really has a tendency to bang on about turtle doves) when he really should be tackling the problem at its source. If I’m not mistaken, hasn’t this quota been negotiated legally with the EU?
Furthermore, I hate his usage of the term ‘British birds’. He certainly doesn’t understand Environmental Law. It’s like taking in a breath and saying ‘This is Maltese air.’ Resources are increasingly hard to lay claim over if they cross transnational boundaries or are not subject to one place. Conflicting interests between different countries are a pity, but it’s not legally sound to try to and interfere with a country’s legal and sustainable use of a resource because they messed up theirs.
Let me give you an example: I assume you live in a household, Daphne. Let’s say your ISP has a download limit. Do you think it’s fair if your relative downloads 20GBs (or whatever) of data and then asks you to not download anything for the next few weeks?
[Daphne – Aside from the fact that I’ve never heard of any such download limit, I’m not a teenager living at home with my siblings and quarrelling over equal portions. Fairness doesn’t enter the equation with marriage and motherhood.
I know through direct experience that the spring-hunting season is detrimental to the bird situation. Birdlife counts the dead birds when the season is open. I count the singing ones in the garden when the season is closed. When the season is open, there’s dead silence outside. It’s eerie. Within days of the season closing, birds start singing in the trees. The chorus today was riotous. Maybe this works for you in fair terms: I get to suffer the silence while they enjoy prowling about with their guns outside. Then they get to suffer the singing while I enjoy it.]
It is certainly not for everyone, myself included, but you cannot deny that there is nothing wrong with hunting if it is practised sustainably.
[Daphne – Actually, I think there is plenty that is wrong with the fundamental concept of shooting for the pleasure of killing, PCM. This is not target practice we’re talking about. And I think there is a great deal wrong with the wanton destruction of grace and beauty. If eagles were as common as sparrows, I would still feel the same way about their destruction. I wouldn’t put a knife through a beautiful painting just because the artist has another 40 years of painting ahead of him and so destroying his art is sustainable. Or to put it in a way more hunters would understand, the world is full of beautiful cars, but what sort of person would go over one with a sledgehammer just because there are more where it came from? Conservation is just one part of the argument.]
“British birds” has a tinge of hamallagni to it.
There is another argument to this, apart from the ‘cruelty’ and killing of birds.
Hunting (as done by humans, ie using guns) takes away specimens of species indiscriminately as it does not weed out the weak specimens of a population, but on the contrary, it mostly removes the stronger ones. This is especially true for spring hunting more than anything.
The removal of strong, healthy specimens, weakens the species as it permits the lower spectrum of specimens to reproduce.
So effectively, to continue with Daphne’s argument, it is not a simple question of numbers.
Many people miss the point of a hunt: it is a stroll, a stalk and possibly a shoot but not always. Hunting in Malta: sit in lay-by, wait for tired and hungry bird to come close, shoot – possibly with an auto, if the first cartridge does not do it, the third one is bound to hit it-.
I would really like to see these people trying trying to get a deer hunt licence – they’ll have to start again at secondary school level, if not primary.
You don’t have to be a teenager quarrelling over internet usage, you could be a group of people sharing a flat. Of course it enters into the equation. Wouldn’t you want to live in a household where everyone is reasonably content? In any case, here you go:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwidth_cap
It was just an example, no need to be so condescending about it. I could have used an example of a shared water pump in a village suffering drought.
But anyway, moving on. I think it’s a bit cliche to say that hunting is “shooting for the pleasure of killing.” With that mindset one would assume that hunters are homicidal maniacs, or that they routinely torture their hunting dogs.
[Daphne – The only thing that really wears me out about running this blog is dealing with illogical reasoning. Of course hunters shoot for the pleasure of killing in Malta – they’re not exactly after the birds for food, are they. And it’s not target practice, otherwise they’d be in a range. The fact that they don’t routinely torture their hunting dogs (with which they have a relationship) does not mean they don’t get a thrill out of killing birds. Nor does that mean they are homicidal maniacs. It is, however, very much an urge to destroy.]
I think there’s different reasons why one would choose to hunt. Unfortunately this isn’t the case in Malta, but there are numerous examples of hunters who contribute and donate to conservation programmes because they do not only enjoy nature, but think it is in their best interest to preserve it. Here are some examples in the US:
http://www.rmef.org/Conservation/HuntingIsConservation/25ReasonsWhyHuntingIsConservation.aspx
Besides, I would guess that there are people who think hunting is atrocious but wouldn’t hesitate to harm a mouse, spider or lizard.
[Daphne – You’re doing it again. People who kill mice and spiders (why lizards?) don’t make a point of sitting around all day waiting to kill them for fun. They might find a mouse in their house and sensibly, will kill it rather than have it run around the place for months.]
Unfortunately as they say comparisons are odious and those referring to paintings and cars are just that.
Whatever the reasons for hunting, and there is little doubt that it is not practiced for essential sustenance in Malta, they are not relevant to the debate.
Nevertheless your arguments clearly expose the real reasons for the “spring” hunting referendum – it’s nothing to do with “spring” but just chipping away at hunting in general, as was always known by all. Nothing new there, just an admission.
Is it right or is it wrong is the debate. Is the taking of “x” number of any particular species sustainable, or is it not?
There are only two kinds of objectors to hunting (or fishing, or the taking of absolutely any animal species from the wild, mussels, prawns, calamari anyone?) and those are, vegans, and hypocrites.
Vegans I have no argument with, it’s an opinion even if I disagree with it because man is omnivorous, unlike, for example, bovines. Being omnivorous and specifically eating meat has been proven to be one main reason for the accelerated evolutionary development of the human brain. Were we vegetarians our stomachs would be designed to deal with a diet based on plant material alone, like a cow’s. It is not, and furthermore a purely vegetarian diet, without the knowledge of supplements and careful dietary choices all of which were unknown to our forbears, is extremely unhealthy and will lead to an early death.
Hypocrites because whenever one eats any form of animal one is simply entrusting the killing of said animal to someone else. Out of sight, out of mind, how very convenient.
Considering furthermore the immense amount of food waste including of course that which is animal derived, one could conclude that man totally unnecessarily kills perhaps 25% of all the production (animal killing, let’s let this sink in) of slaughterhouses and fisheries worldwide.
That’s a hell of a lot of cuddly animals going from lovable to landfill, but it’s all OK, yet some people who are at least deriving some harmless (if sustainable) pleasure from following what is a basic instinct that may take millennia or more to evolve out, well, that’s just not on, because it ultimately exposes our hypocrisy relating to the preceding.
They are declining in numbers where Maltese hunters have no effect on their populations. Sorry for not being clear.
More of the same, refer to the Malta Independent:
http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2014-05-08/news/government-highlights-objective-debate-on-hunting-in-malta-in-house-of-commons-4896555008/
May I also point out that campaigning against fox hunting in Britain has been done in numerous other countries.
Growing up it was even a topic we discussed in school at length, with campaigns taking place in various media – and this was in Sweden.
This whole idea that one may not express opinions about things happening in countries apart from one’s own is quite ludicrous. When people do bad things it’s bad regardless of where they are from and it’s no justification that other people may be worse.
Even in Sweden in the case of wolf hunting, people who are against wolf hunting usually have never seen a wolf and have never had a wolf kill their wildstock. It’s an urban vs rural issue really.
But again, that’s not hunting. In that case they kill wolves to protect their livestock.
I heard gunshots this morning. Is the season still open?
[Daphne – No. It closed a week ago.]
Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando’s opinion is as relevant as mine now.
Phew, I have to thank God for that.
JPO is a non-entity.
They are still shooting in Marsascala this week, including at 6am this morning. Before someone asks if I am sure it was shooting, I was a soldier for 25 years.
Foxes may not migrate, but beavers take frequent trips to the Adriatic.