Authorities believe there could be as many as three times the number of licensed taxidermists, operating without a licence.
A police investigator focused on wildlife crime told Times of Malta how he and other officers were currently investigating a number of taxidermists believed to be helping hunters stuff protected birds shot down in Malta and abroad.
“There are a number of these persons across the island – practically in every locality, some of whom we are investigating.
“People will pay quite a hefty price to have these birds stuffed, as there is almost no point shooting them down if you can’t add them to a collection,” the source said.
The source noted that there were around a dozen licensed taxidermists in Malta.
However, there were at least 30 others who operated without any licence to do so.
These unlicensed taxidermists are of particular interest to the authorities as they were suspected of being involved in the smuggling of protected birds shot by Maltese hunters abroad.
Last week, the police swooped in on one such taxidermist, raiding his home and Mosta pet store.
On Saturday the police’s Administrative Law Enforcement (ALE) unit uncovered 53 dead protected birds in the Mosta shop along Triq Ġużeppi Callus.
The dead birds were found in a concealed freezer at the back of the shop and included eagles and storks believed to have been illegally shot down in Malta in recent months.
Taxidermist no stranger to law enforcement
The police believe the birds had been brought to the store by hunters who wanted to have the highly prized species stuffed to be kept in their private collections at home.
A number of stuffed birds were also found in the shop-keeper’s house.
The raid was carried out after the police received information about a man who was allegedly seen taking a dead eagle to the shop. That bird was believed to have been shot as recently as last week when several protected short-toed eagles were reportedly shot down by local hunters.
Sources confirmed the person in question did not have a licence to stuff birds. The illegal taxidermist was no stranger to law enforcement, with one source saying he had been the subject of wildlife crime investigations for some 15 years.
This is the second raid on an illegal taxidermist in recent months. Back in August the ALE had uncovered some 700 dead protected birds in a makeshift taxidermy suite in a Kirkop warehouse.
Times of Malta had subsequently reported how one of the men in the group of seven taken in for questioning following that raid is believed to be a principal organiser of poaching trips to Egypt in which protected species are often shot down and smuggled into the island.
Sources have said that efforts to catalogue these birds was still under way.
The vast majority of these birds were shot down over-seas and had been smuggled into Malta. This, a source said, showed a dramatic shift in the local poaching community’s activity.
He said that a similar raid on the same Kirkop taxidermist back in the late 1990s had uncovered around 2,500 dead protected birds – 1,500 carcasses in freezers, and a further 500 birds ready to be embalmed.
At the time, the bulk of these birds had been shot down illegally in Malta.
