BirdLife Malta recovered a young Black Stork with severe leg injuries from a reservoir near the prime minister’s official summer residence in Girgenti on Tuesday morning.

The NGO said the bird was illegally shot by nearby hunters.

It is the second stork that formed part of a small flock and that has been shot.

The other black stork was reportedly shot in Ta’ Ċenċ, Gozo.

Black Stork at Buskett. File photo: BirdLife/AronTanti

In a statement, BLM said the Black Stork (Ciconia nigra) - a rare visitor to Malta - was a protected species under Maltese law. It was also afforded the highest protection under Annex 1 of the EU Birds Directive and Annex A of the EU Wildlife Trade Regulations.

“Illegal hunting of these species continues due to high demand resulting from two amnesties on taxidermy bird collections granted in the past, which remain largely unverified to this day,” said BLM’s Head of Conservation, Nick Barbara.

In 1997, the then Labour Government granted the first amnesty, with hunters declaring close to 240,000 taxidermy birds.

In 2003, the then Nationalist Government granted another amnesty, with hunters declaring an additional 282,000 taxidermy birds.

This brings the total of taxidermy birds to over half a million.

"The Maltese authorities began a verification process, but it was never completed. As a result, it has never been confirmed if hunters possess the taxidermy birds they declared in these two amnesty lists.

"Consequently, some hunters claimed to have certain bird species in their collections that they did not actually have, becoming practically a wish list of birds before their lists were verified. This allowed the illegal hunting of protected birds to continue, reignited once more with recent permissions allowing hunters to transfer such wish lists between them," the eNGO said.

Confiscated illegally stuffed birds from our archives. 2011 file photo: BirdLife Malta