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Hunters like to say that hunting is eternal, but it must be admitted that the debate about hunting is even more eternal. Currently, there is a scandalous tsunami in the electronic space about the machinations of Environment Minister Kęstutis Mažeika, who legalizes bow hunting. I want to share some details of the process that led to this result.
The technical aspects of hunting are regulated by the Hunting Rules in the Territory of the Republic of Lithuania approved by the Minister of the Environment.
The rules define, among other things, which animals can be hunted, when and by what means. It is here this Friday that the arches sprouted, whose use will come into effect from April 1, 2022.
The deals have ended, the fireworks have started
The full package of amendments has matured since the fall of last year, when it was agreed at a regular meeting of the Hunting Advisory Council that hunting organizations would present mutually agreed proposals, to be discussed at the next meeting. The hunters presented the project, but in that place the agreements ended and the fireworks began.
The scheduled meeting did not take place, and the Ministry of the Environment held a discussion in place in March, to which only hunter organizations were called.
The Ministry of the Environment and specifically the Deputy Minister of the Hunting Council, Rasa Vaitkevičiūtė, closed the wall of silence and did not offer to answer how and when the coordination process with other interested parties will be carried out.
In the end he sent a formal response that there will be no other coordination, only binding on the public. The response was sent at the last legal moment established (the twentieth business day following the request), with only one day remaining until the end of the public consultation announced in the response. And keep in mind that I still haven’t got to the interesting places in history.
As I mentioned, it all started with hunters’ proposals, which were also made public. The Environmental Coalition, together with the Baltic Wolf Association for Nature Conservation, prepared and submitted comments to the Ministry of the Environment on the hunters’ proposals, and also submitted their proposals, all of which are also public.
I also shared this material with all the members of the Hunting Council in an electronic correspondence, as I remind you that the Ministry did not carry out any harmonization process at the time and, as it turned out, it will not. Representatives of the Lithuanian Hunter Organization Gytis Misiukevičius and Gediminas Vaitiekūnas responded to these comments by sending an official (but not private) letter to the Ministry of the Environment and other colleagues of the Hunting Council with their comments.
The letter is enriched with accusations of corruption and blackmail against the Environmental Coalition, signs of terrorism, inexplicable links with former Environment Minister Kęstutis Navickas, sugar cane, seagulls, personal insults and other rhetorical gems.
“We have common musicians roaring from the barn to the living room”
Well, here’s a classic: Instead of responding to specific business arguments, the opponent makes himself available, whether on the subject or not, because the goal is to “prove” that his arguments are incorrect by default. Later, Gytis Misiukevičius sent another opinion of himself, which is adorned with sayings like “conservationists only care about grinding garbage and blowing bureaucracy”, “Fuck or do you want to eat?”, And so on.
So we have common musicians who roam from the barn to the site in dirty shoes and are not caught, and what is not so here.
Incidentally, an interesting fact is that the Lithuanian Hunters Association is part of an ongoing educational project on hunting (https://www.miske.lt/projektas/), whose objective is to improve the image of hunters in society.
It should also be noted that this is not an innocent gossip in the gutter or a fool somewhere outside of Facebook, but an official letter to the Ministry of the Environment and correspondence with various official state institutions about the legislation in question. Consequently, it is part of the legislative process.
The disrespect shown by these two individuals, not only for themselves and for others, but also for democratic institutions and the legislative process, is simply staggering.
What steps has Vice Minister Rasa Vaitkevičiūtė taken, who is responsible for ensuring that the process of changing the Hunting Rules is democratic and ethical, not to mention compliance with the law?
None. In silence, calm, in the distance, the birds sing. Why is it that some important hunter-gatherer here deliberately and systematically humiliates the honor and dignity of other participants in the process or mocks the ministry itself? Here’s something terrible, not said or done after the hunt for the bottle.
I think this is a good place to remember that both the Deputy Minister and the Minister Kęstutis Mažeika are hunters; It could be really indecent to criticize yours or punish your weapons in any way.
It is time to make a lyrical deviation and share what I think about the current political leadership of the Ministry of the Environment. I find no better summary than the saying of any of the politicians who spoke in the Seimas gallery that God gave us power for our sins.
And it seems that we have added many sins if we have already received mazeikas and vaitkevičiūtė. When I publicly criticized then-Environment Minister Kęstutis Navickas and his team a couple of years ago for his failed communication and exaggerated the big economy in the field of nature protection, I didn’t even imagine what we would get after that.
What does not destroy will stop
And we have people who came deliberately and maliciously to demolish everything they will achieve in a couple of years. What does not destroy will stop. What won’t stop you will at least slow you down or make it more difficult. People whose motto is “forest – for boards, animals – for hunters, protected areas – in the trash, and society with their questions and suggestions – suck.” Therefore, like almost the entire conservation community and the staff of the same Ministry of the Environment, I hope to bite my teeth when autumn comes, when this natural disaster will finally end. Which was so generously presented to us by the Prime Minister. As he said then, to make the reforms more viable.
Time to go back to the Hunting Rules, time to talk about scammers. So how did arcs appear in the rulers? I will start by remembering that in 2018, when the idea of archery was born, the member of the Seimas Kęstutis Mažeika was one of the initiators and “faces” of the proposal.
Bows were also recorded in tenders submitted by hunters in the fall. And in a meeting with hunter organizations organized by the ministry, the minister promised that the bows would be. Therefore, when there were no obeisances in the draft Rules submitted for public consultation, we were pleasantly surprised. Consequently, after hearing the arguments, he estimated that the whims of a handful of wealthy people who wanted entertainment could not be more important than the opinion of 60,000 citizens who signed the petition. Strange, unusual, but cheerful.
And here is May 8. An order signed by the minister sees the light. In which, as nowhere, nothing arches. Knowing that the Minister wanted obeisances a long time ago and promised his fellow hunters a few months ago, there is no doubt that this was done on purpose. In the draft submitted for public consultation, bows were not included so as not to cause unnecessary discussion and outrage, but it was immediately known that they would be recorded later when the public was already silent. After all, this is a well-known scheme of fraud: reading and reconciling the contract, and before signing another to put another, which from the beginning lay in a drawer. Citizens or companies would be legally responsible for such actions. And what about the politicians?
In the end, it remains to be seen that while the hunt is handled by musicians with scam artists, everyone else is quietly smoking in the corner. Heads washed in cold water. He continued to patience the calendars for the rest of October.
Vaidas Balys is a member of the board of the “Baltic Wolf” Nature Conservation Association, a representative of the Environmental Coalition on the Hunting Management Advisory Council.
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