A conservationist group has slammed a decision to renew a bird trapping “research” project, a controversial practice which has led to Malta being accused of breaching EU conservation laws.
In a press conference on Thursday, BirdLife Malta CEO Mark Sultana said members of the government's consultative body on hunting and trapping had been called to an emergency meeting in Gozo on Wednesday.
During this meeting, the so-called Ornis committee voted to renew the “research” project for another season, Sultana said.
The research scheme was first introduced in 2020 after the European Commission effectively banned a regular season.
Critics say this was done to allow trapping to go ahead anyway and Brussels is now taking Malta to the European Court for violating a ban on bird trapping.
The contentious practice of trapping protected finches using cages and nets was effectively banned by the European Court of Justice in 2018.
It declared that, by allowing the live capture of seven species of protected wild finches, Malta was failing to fulfil its conservation obligations.
Police presence assured
Sultana said the Ornis committee had been told that one of the reasons given to justify the decision to reintroduce the trapping research project was that the police had assured the committee that it was equipped to ensure proper enforcement for it.
“This is ironic given that police presence was negligible and in some places even non-existence during the autumn hunting season that is currently ongoing, Sultana said.
In a presentation, head of conservation at BirdLife, Nicholas Barbara said that BirdLife volunteers had observed over 170 illegalities in just three weeks of the autumn hunting season. Some 28 protected birds have been picked up injured or dead from shotgun wounds.
The NGO said it has observed a sharp increase in illegal hunting over the past five years.
Whereas between 2013 and 2017 BirdLife had recorded 266 protected birds that had been shot down, these escalated to 700 between 2018 and 2022.
Whilst on average volunteers encountered police presence some 2.6% of the time they were out on patrol, Barbara said, none were ever recorded on patrol in Gozo, with Gozitan police never responding to calls made by BirdLife when reporting environmental crimes.
“What we are showing you is just the tip of the iceberg,” Sultana continued.
“Very often shot birds are kept and we never find the body, because the country has lost complete control over the situation of stuffed birds.”
He said that police either were not being given the appropriate resources to tackle hunting illegalities or there is political interference targeted at preventing the police from doing their jobs
President Darryl Grima said that in light of the situation, the NGO would be placing a bigger emphasis on Gozo to shed light on the “free for all” happening on the island.
Grima said that renewing the trapping project was “an insult to people’s intelligence” and ironic that the police presence was being used as an excuse to justify its existence when police could not keep illegalities under control.
The group also pointed out that while police would not respond on-site to their reports of illegalities in Gozo, when hunters accused them of trespassing a car would always be sent to their location.