Malta's bird trapping lobby has an idea for how its members can trap finches without falling foul of EU law: become more like BirdLife.
The FKNK wants finch trapping to continue despite the European Court of Justice having ruled, for a second time, that Malta broke EU laws by allowing the practice.
They say that bird trappers are far more useful to “catch and release” research projects than others who catch finches for research.
In just one season (2016-2017) trappers caught far more finches than [environmental NGO] BirdLife managed to catch in over 44 years, the Federazzjoni Kaċċaturi Nassaba Konservazzjonisti (FKNK) said.
“The blatant effectiveness of the trapper method of live finch capture compared to the bird ringing method could not be more obvious,” they said.
BirdLife uses mist nets to live-capture birds as part of an international programme known as Euring.
Once captured, data about the bird, including its weight and probable sex, is registered. A small ring is then wrapped around its talon and the bird is released.
By contrast, trappers traditionally use caged birds to lure finches to their nets.
The trapping project deemed illegal by the ECJ did not require trappers to ring captured birds. Trappers only had to record data of trapped birds that already had a ring.
The FKNK now wants its trappers to be taught how to ring birds, so that they can also participate in the ringing programme while using the more effective, “tried and tested” method to trap them.
To do that, the government should employ professional ringers to assist hunters in the procedure, it said.
In 2018, the European Union’s top court ruled that trapping in Malta was illegal as it did not satisfy the EU’s derogation that allows the trapping of the species in “small numbers”.
Two years later, Malta started to allow finch trapping again. This time, it applied a derogation to EU law that allows trapping for “research purposes” if there is no other way to conduct research.
Earlier this month, the ECJ dismissed those arguments and ruled that Malta was in breach of EU law. Gozo Minister Clint Camilleri, who is himself a trapper and whose ministerial portfolio includes hunting and trapping, argued that the court only found "minor breaches" in the way Malta set up its research project.
Birdlife said that was an insult to people's intelligence, and urged the prime minister to no longer trust Camilleri with the brief.
Under the now-forbidden rules, the finches that were caught had to be released, an obligation that according to BirdLife Malta activists is usually ignored by trappers.
“According to our estimates 51,000 finches have been captured in Malta and never released,” BirdLife’s head of conservation Nicholas Barbara said.
“The intention has always been to trap birds and not release them. The government has tried to fool the Commission this was not the case, but it failed miserably,” Barbara said.
FKNK President Lucas Micallef said trappers who did not release birds are breaking the law.
“We cannot endorse those actions,” he said.
BirdLife believes the FKNK proposal to teach all trappers how to ring birds is a non-starter, for two reasons.
First, there are just too many trappers: the 3,500 registered trappers are too numerous to realistically conduct sampling on the finch population that passes through Malta, Barbara said.
Secondly, Barbara said, using caged finches to attract the wild birds is cruel and has led to the mass importation of caged finches from Sicily and goes against the point of conservation.