an excerpt from the main article

The evident illegality of well over eighty bird hides in the Hagar Qim & Mnajdra World Heritage Site is a sore point of discussion. It is interesting to refer to an interview, published in The Malta Independent on Sunday of the 10th March 2002, where journalist Karl Schembri brought up the issue with Planning Authority Chairman Andrew Calleja:

Karl Schembri: "When are you going to remove the traps laid by hunters in the Mnajdra Temple area?"

Andrew Calleja: "The Cultural Heritage Interim Board was meeting to discuss works envisaged on the perimeter fence and security of the area, so we are working hand in hand with the Board. When the time comes for these traps to be removed we will act accordingly."

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Spot the Hides, or better still ... "Spot the Temples!"
TRAPPERS DEFYING THE AUTHORITIES

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Martin Galea, Secretary of a national heritage organisation, Din l-Art Helwa, writing in the October 2000 issue of "Vigilio", a heritage journal, expresses his society's disdain about this matter. "The recent scandal where the Ministry of the Environment amended the hunting regulations to allow hunters to shoot from the roads was the epitome of the malaise afflicting this country."

"The Minister of Environment [Dr. Francis Zammit Dimech], even stated that the new regulations made hunting safer. Readers will not be shocked to learn that in Malta's archeological park, which contains Hagar Qim and Mnajdra, there are over thirty illegal hunters' hides. This, in an area enclosed by a wall which cost Lm50,000 [c. USD150,000] to build at taxpayers' expense, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is simply shameful and uncivilized."