‘Conservationist’ hunters prepare for autumn season

By Martin Hellicar

WITH THE autumn shooting season set to blast off on Sunday, the Hunters’ Association yesterday sang the praises of hunters as conservationists.

“The hunting association is genuinely interested in the preservation of wildlife as much as in hunting,” association chairman Andreas Pantelas said.

Shooting served to “manage” wildlife, he insisted. “We believe that the way hunting is carried out here is correct and preserves and develops wildlife – – and balances it.”

“There is no need for anyone to abolish hunting, it just needs to be properly managed,” Pantelas added.

Environmentalists say the 50,000-strong local hunting brigade threatens the stability of natural ecosystems by over-exploiting the populations of certain species.

Independent studies have suggested local sportsmen are good at keeping to designated shooting areas but are also often guilty of indiscriminately targeting both legitimate game and protected bird species. An estimated 8 million mostly migrant birds are killed, by means both fair and foul, every year in Cyprus.

The Hunters’ Association yesterday met with Interior Minister Christodoulos Christodoulou to discuss a number of issues ahead of Sunday’s resumption of shooting.

Christodoulou said he had discussed with hunters the need to bring certain, unspecified, practices within the sport into line with EU norms. He said the government was keen to have hunters “on side” in this harmonisation effort.

Pantelas said the association was happy to work with the minister.

Migrant turtle doves and resident wood pigeons will be the main quarry come Sunday, with quail, rock doves, sparrows, magpies, jackdaws, hooded crows and foxes also on the legitimate hit-list.

Hunting is allowed on Sundays and Wednesdays till the end of September in some areas and daily from August 22 till the end of March in others.

The Game service has already released some 100,000 captive-bred chukors — local hunter’s favourite quarry — in preparation for the main, winter, shooting season beginning in October. Huge releases are deemed necessary to provide sufficient quarry for the shooters, with wild breeding populations of the partridge having been driven to the brink by persistent shooting.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.