South Africa has handed control of all of its nature reserves to the country’s big-game hunters, citing Malta as its inspiration.
This weekend, the Maltese government will officially grant stewardship of the Miżieb and L-Aħrax woodland areas to hunting federation FKNK.
“When we read about the Maltese government’s decision, we were like, ‘Why didn’t we think of that before?'” Barbara Creecy, the Minister of Environment, Forestry and Fisheries, told Bis-Serjetà, after she signed into law the transfer of 19 national parks – totalling 37,511 square kilometres – from SANParks – South Africa’s leading conservation authority – to the Professional Hunters’ Association of South Africa (PHASA).
“All this time we’ve had park rangers guarding our elephants, lions, rhinos and so on, when the people who should be protecting them are the ones who kill them for sport and mount their heads in the living rooms of their mansions. It’s the most logical thing in the world. The hunters themselves have given me their word that they will use the optical scopes on their high-powered rifles to keep an eye out for poachers,” she said.
Creecy added that she would also be resigning from her ministerial post so that, just like Clint Camilleri in Malta, an actual hunter could oversee the regulation of hunting.
“And the rest of his portfiolo doesn’t even have anything to do with hunting. Malta is a truly enlightened country.”
The soon-to-be-former minister said she had advised President Cyril Ramaphosa to look at other ways South Africa could emulate Malta.
“For example, Malta’s political parties have their own TV stations, and it’s the only country in Europe that has a total ban on abortion. Surely a tiny island with that level of self-belief in its own uniqueness must be onto something. We must make abortion illegal at once,” she said.
