The Eurasian golden plover. Photo: Shutterstock

There is “no scientific basis” to ban the trapping and hunting of golden plovers in Malta, according to the government.

An Animal Rights Parliamentary Secretariat spokeswoman said the hunting of golden plovers in Malta constituted a minor fraction of the total number hunted across the EU and did not endanger the species.

“Malta does not in any way jeopardise or threaten the conservation status of the golden plover. Moreover, the limited live trapping season occurs under strict supervised conditions and monitoring,” she said, reacting to a statement by the Committee Against Bird Slaughter.

The committee recently launched a ‘Handle with Care’ campaign calling for the birds to be struck off the hunting docket.

According to the German-based organisation, the population of the plover species in central Europe was on the brink of extinction.

The spokeswoman, however, dismissed the claims insisting the amount hunted on the island constituted less than one per cent of the species’ natural mortality rate.

“The EU considers this to be a ‘small number’ threshold. On average, Maltese hunters and trappers harvest almost 60 times fewer golden plovers than their counterparts in France and 30 times fewer than in Portugal,” she said.

Malta does not in any way jeopardise or threaten its conservation status

Despite this, CABS spokesman Axel Hirschfeld yesterday said when contacted that only four breeding pairs still existed in central Europe.

He insisted that the continued hunting of the golden plover would obliterate the species from all central states. “There are many subspecies of golden plover. There may be certain types, perhaps the Russian and Scandinavian plovers, which also frequent Malta during migration and make it seem there are a lot more. However, the central European species is about to be wiped out,” he said.

But the spokeswoman maintained that the bird population was not at risk.

She said that, while certain types of plovers had shown moderate decline, the Pluvialis apricaria altifrons, which migrates over Malta, had actually increased.

She said that the main factors believed to have contributed to the decline in certain species were the deforestation of heath lands as well as a susceptibility to very cold temperatures.

Figures published by Birdlife International revealed that the central European population of golden plover was estimated to be within the 460,000 to 740,000 breeding pairs.

Figures compiled by the European Bird Census Council earlier this year found that the population of the golden plover across Europe had actually increased. The spokeswoman said several other scientific references had also pointed to a stable population.