Two to be arraigned for killing flamingos

Two persons are expected shortly to be charged in court with shooting flamingos at Marsaxlokk, and the police are also seeking two other men in connection with the shooting, police sources said yesterday.

Four flamingos were shot down at Marsaxlokk on Thursday, two of them in the presence of Malta Environment and Planning Authority inspectors, who were unable to stop the hunters from killing the protected birds.

The MEPA inspectors were at the Ballut nature reserve at Marsaxlokk to investigate a report and saw two flamingos settling down in the bay at about 10.15 a.m.

Soon after several hunters went for them stealthily, both from land and from boats at sea.

The environment inspectors warned them not to shoot the birds because they were protected species, but the hunters ignored the warnings, shot them both and escaped, leaving the two dead birds in the water. The police managed to retrieve only one of the birds.

Another two flamingos had been shot from the same place earlier on in the day.

Police from the Administration and Law Enforcement Unit arrested two men shortly after the shooting. Both admitted to the police they had shot the protected birds. One killed a flamingo from the nature reserve while the other shot at them from a boat.

The police are now in search of another two hunters, whose identity is known to them.

Although the Rural Affairs and Environment Ministry said last week that the current hunting regulations were an improvement on the previous regulations because fines for killing strictly protected species went up to Lm2,000 and jail sentences of up to two years could be imposed, BirdLife complained that changes to the laws last February - before the EU membership referendum - had removed the automatic confiscation of the firearm used.

Guns were now confiscated only if birds were killed in nature reserves, at sea within three kilometres from the foreshore, for taking or disturbing breeding birds and if strictly protected species were shot. A gun would not be confiscated automatically for shooting a flamingo. There are only 17 'strictly protected' species that have been announced recently. These include shearwaters (cief), several birds of prey and herons.

There is also the tendency for courts to impose only minimum fines, especially for first time offenders, hence fines going up to Lm2,000 meant little in practice.

BirdLife has reported rampant hunting abuses with many protected birds being regularly shot even at Mizieb, an area controlled by the hunters' federation.

The police sources said a hunter was apprehended on a speedboat on Saturday, when the season for hunting at sea is still closed. It opens in October.

The sources said it was not infrequent for police to find protected species wrapped up in plastic bags tied to buoys in the open sea - hunters who illegally killed protected birds were often putting them in watertight bags and marking their position with a GPS so that they or friends without guns would go to retrieve them, lessening the risk of them being found in possession of dead protected species.