Lm30,000 worth of bird, mammal skins seized

Three men are being held by the police after two of them were allegedly found in possession of about 700 skins of protected birds and 23 mammals and three reptiles on their return from Cairo via Athens on Monday night.

The third was arrested yesterday, police sources said.

The value of the haul is estimated to exceed Lm30,000, the police said.

Customs officers said this was the biggest single haul of skins made at any one time. The skins were in four suitcases. Customs last year intercepted seven suitcases containing a total of 447 bird skins, the vast majority of which were protected species, some listed in appendix one of the CITES convention, which prohibits their trade.

Skins of birds of prey such as black shouldered kites, steppe eagles, long-legged buzzards and other large or colourful birds such as pelicans, storks and little green bee eaters as well as of mammals, including several foxes, a gazelle, mongoose and reptiles were among the items allegedly found in the luggage of two of the three men in detention.

Sources said inspectors from the Customs enforcement unit detected skins in four suitcases when incoming luggage were being scanned at random. The luggage was monitored and one of the two men who was detained collected two of the suitcases and proceeded through the green channel before being stopped. The second man said he only had some clothes to declare, the sources said.

Police officers from the administrative law enforcement unit were called to investigate further and the two men, a 26-year old from Kirkop and a 38-year-old from Cospicua, who were suspected to be couriers, were arrested.

A 35-year old man from Dingli was arrested yesterday in connection with the find.

From the condition of the plumage, it appeared that most of the birds were shot between March and early May. The sources said it had long been suspected that Maltese hunters who went on shooting holidays in winter were leaving birds in cold stores in Egypt to be smuggled in summer, when the hunting season is closed and the volume of work for Customs is heavier, with monitoring perceived to be lower.

The find comes in the wake of an article in the Belgian bird protection magazine L'homme et l'oiseau, the magazine of the Belgian bird protection group.

The magazine has focused on the shooting of protected birds in Egypt by Maltese hunters.

A four-page article said Maltese hunters go on tours and pose as tourists, booking via internet, renting guns in Egypt and decimating bird life in several areas from Port Said in the North to Abu Simbel, close to the Sudan border.

"Birdwatchers who visited Abu Simbel (in the Aswan province) and Lake Qarun in the El Fayoum province, saw uncontrolled bird hunting, particularly by Maltese hunters. A bird watcher who has repeatedly visited Egypt said bird populations at Lake Nasser, near Abu Simbel, as well as at Lake Qarun, in the Fayoum region, have been decimated by the hunters," the article said.

The number of birds at Lake Qarun, a protected area in the Fayoum region, has also been noted to have decreased considerably and resident birds are noticeably absent even in the surrounding areas.

"Local people confirmed that Maltese hunters shoot anything that flies. Hunters compete who gets the biggest bag. Dead birds are stored in the freezers of hotels. The birds hunters want are skinned and the unwanted dead birds are distributed to locals," the magazine said.

"Italian hunters were also very keen hunters and were almost as bad as Maltese but are not so keen about taking trophies back home," the magazine said.

Nigel Jones, managing director of Ornitholidays, who was leading a birding tour in Egypt, was quoted as saying he and his group visited Abu Simbel and El Fayoum and saw a hunter kill a spotted redshank in a reserve at El Fayoum.

"At Abu Simbel, the boatman we used had his boat rigged out for shooting and he told us he ferried many Maltese hunters. We did not see any Maltese people hunting but saw the consequences of hunting as there were very few birds," the report said.

People posing as tourists go in summer and smuggle luggage full of bird skins into Malta. Imported birds end up being sold underhand in Malta, where a Verraux's eagle fetches Lm400 and short-toed eagles fetch around Lm150, the article claims.

It notes the finds made by Maltese Customs officers which included 38 eagles (including 23 steppe eagles), nine ospreys, 11 eagle owls, two barbary falcons, 13 lanner falcons, 20 flamingoes, 11 white storks, several spoonbills and pelicans. There were even species that could be commonly shot in Malta, such as greenshanks, black-winged stilts, black-headed gull, common snipe and turtle dove.

Efforts to obtain a comment from the Egyptian embassy in Malta were unsuccessful.