Updated 7.15pm with FKNK's reaction

This year’s spring hunting season was riddled with illegalities that warrant immediate scrutiny by the European Commission, BirdLife Malta said on Monday.

It said the illegalities were mainly the targeting of protected birds including the European Turtle-dove (Gamiema).

"While Minister Clint Camilleri knows that the European Commission is not happy with his decision to open a spring hunting season on the protected Turtle-dove, he is also aware that this was illegal and breaches the EU Birds Directive which specifically does not allow any hunting in spring on this species due to its vulnerable status," the NGO said.

"To add insult to injury, it was also another season where hunters were witnessed breaking the law with widespread use of electronic callers and targeting of Turtle doves illegally during the first week when only Common Quail (Summiena) could be shot," it added.

"Such birds are then declared as being bred in captivity and used to greenwash the hunting activity effects on biodiversity by releasing them back into the wild," it added.

Hunting of protected birds

BirdLife Malta head of conservation Nicholas Barbara said the season was once again marred with the hunting of protected birds, from birds of prey like Marsh-harriers, Common Kestrels, Red-footed Falcons and Ospreys, as well as Nightjars, Bee-eaters, Golden Orioles and Hoopoes.

Between April 10 and 30 BirdLife Malta recovered 18 shot birds belonging to 15 protected species whilst Environmental Protection Unit (EPU) police retrieved a further 16 illegal hunting casualties.

Even more birds seen or found with shotgun injuries included Grey, Night and Purple Herons, Hobby, Cuckoo, Woodchat Shrike and even a Yellow-legged Gull.

"All in all, our annual Spring Watch camp – which fielded an average of just three teams a day across a number of watchpoints in Malta and Gozo – has witnessed over 208 illegal hunting incidents during the period."

The lack of control over the hunting of protected species spanned also to the target species of the spring hunting derogation – the red-listed Turtle-dove and Common Quail – supposedly controlled by quotas allocated for the season.

An injured Purple Heron.An injured Purple Heron.

BirdLife said that there is no doubt that the national hunting bag limit of Turtle-doves was exceeded. The climax proving the lack of control on hunting activity was the fact that hunters themselves admitted they could not access the digital game reporting system.

Heavy presence of hunters in Gozo

BirdLife Malta CEO Mark Sultana said: “The season was clearly a free-for-all with a very evident mass movement of hunters on the island of Gozo not matched by police enforcement. The lack of enforcement on Gozo is also indicated by the significant number of cases of shot protected birds retrieved from the island. The end result remains that hunters in Malta and Gozo are getting used to getting away with targeting protected birds. If one had to compare the last five years since 2018 to date with the previous five years (2013-3017) one would realise that the amount of illegally shot protected birds has nearly trebled," he said.

The number of illegally shot birds has increased, according to BirdLife.The number of illegally shot birds has increased, according to BirdLife.

"Malta has failed to protect migratory birds during their spring migration during the past three weeks and has opened fire on a Vulnerable species which the rest of Europe is doing efforts to protect. Malta shrugged off requests by EU Member States and the European Commission (EC) not to open a spring hunting season on the Turtle-dove. It thus appears, as is expected, that the derogation's scrutiny by the EC should initiate immediately as this is the only remedy to prevent a repeat of this next year." 

FKNK reacts

Late on Monday, the Federation for Hunting and Conservation condemned illegalities - whenever and wherever they happened, adding, however, that it will wait for the official government report before commenting further.

"This should detail the number of administrative infringements reported during the hunting open season timings, the respective percentage of the 8,000 special licence holders, the number of reported crimes that are still sub judice...  and the respective percentage of the 8,000 special licence holders.

"Today’s BirdLife reaction to the hunting season is a clear sign that the organisation has hit the bottom and seems to be in a desperate panicked situation," it said in a statement. 

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