Birdlife Malta said Thursday it believes that a week since the opening of the spring hunting season on the European turtle-dove (Gamiema), the quota of 1,500 catches has been exceeded.

But in a statement in the afternoon, the Wild Bird Regulation Unit said it was following the season and this was not the case.

Birdlife said earlier: "The migrating numbers of turtle-doves and the intensity of hunting activity witnessed since the opening of the season on turtle-doves are amongst the indicators, apart from a higher participation of hunters this season making use of the countryside, including public areas that could not be enjoyed by the general public," the NGO said.

It said various illegalities such as the use of electronic callers had intensified the killing of this vulnerable species in past days.

CEO Mark Sultana said there was no doubt that the data submitted by hunters was purposely under-declared in order for the season to remain open irrespective of the number of turtle-dove hunted.

"Assuming that every day during the first week of the season, only 400 hunters caught just one turtle-dove each on each day of the week, this unrealistically conservative scenario would already reach the figure of 2,800 turtle-doves, nearly double the national hunting bag limit for this species."

Birdlife said its teams had counted over 300 shots in a single morning from one location mostly aimed at turtle-doves during good migration days in the past week.

BirdLife earlier this month lost a court case where it sought to prevent the opening of the season for turtle dove.

Turtle-dove numbers are in decline in Europe and the breed has a ‘Vulnerable to Extinction’ status by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Hunting of turtle dove is banned across all EU Member States.

"The current spring hunting season is nothing more than an uncontrolled deliberate and indiscriminate cull of a species facing extinction, under the guise of a derogation to a Birds Directive aimed at conserving Europe’s birdlife. Malta’s spring hunting season is illegal, immoral, and unethical and sheds only shame to those who have allowed it to happen," Birdlife said.