Conservationists on Monday called on the government to start checking collections of stuffed protected birds for fear they are being used to cover up for poachers. 

In a statement, Birdlife said that the authorities needed to start checking the official list of stuffed birds held by collectors in Malta, raising concerns that these were being abused to cover up for illegal hunting.  

Times of Malta has previously reported on unlicensed taxidermists and the misuse of official paperwork to have protected birds that have been illegally shot, added to collections of birds meant to have been stuffed decades ago.  

Two amnesties offered in 1997 and 2003, had seen hunters declared over 520,000 stuffed protected birds, Birdlife said. 

During the initial verification process, where the actual collections were reconciled against the declared list and appropriately tagged, it became evident that most hunters had declared more birds than they actually had, the conservation group said.

“This was purposely done by those who still wanted to hunt protected birds after the amnesties so that they would still be in time to list them under the forgiven lists,” Birdlife said.

Birdlife said the verification process with collections being tagged had stopped around six years ago, around a year after the Wild Birds Regulation Unit (WBRU) was first set up.

This, Birdlife said, means that hunters who have an unverified collection and shoot down protected birds can still include these birds in their collections and get away scot-free.

At least 523 protected birds shot since 2018 

“In view of this, illegal hunting started to increase, becoming so rampant in the last four years that even the European Commission has been raising this issue with the Maltese Government.”

Birdlife said that between 2014 and 2017, 190 protected birds had been verified by the government veterinarian as being illegally shot. 

Since 2018, 523 protected birds have been illegally shot, the group said. 

“These figures are only the tip of the iceberg, since nearly all shot protected birds are retrieved by the hunters themselves, but they are indicative of the drastic upward trend,” they said. 

The verification process is also important as it regulates the hunting of protected birds by Maltese hunters on hunting trips abroad. 

Times of Malta has reported how Maltese hunters have been tied to poaching crimes in Egypt. 

“These [protected birds] are normally smuggled in illegally in time to be placed in unverified collections,” Birdlife said. 

“The Prime Minister and his cabinet need to understand that the only ones benefitting from this delay are those that break the law.”