Muscat asked Galdes to pave the way for autumn trapping

Just hours before an Ornis committee meeting was expected to vote and decide on the re-legalisation of an autumn finch trapping season, a representative from the Wild Bird Regulations Unit, the government body advising the animal rights ministry on hunting, was busy behind closed doors making a presentation to Joseph Muscat’s Cabinet on the application of a derogation from the EU law banning finch-trapping.

To Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, trapping in autumn has been a foregone conclusion: he had already made it clear to his closest aides that he would introduce trapping for finches in autumn, even though it was not included in his electoral programme. 

But before last year’s election Muscat had entered into a secret pact and promised hunters that he would introduce trapping, even though he knew that this was technically impossible.

Under the EU’s Birds Directive, derogating from the ban on finch trapping must fulfil several conditions, and Malta had already not fulfilled transitional agreements laid out in its EU accession treaty, to set up a captive breeding programme before 2009.

The WBRU, under parliamentary secretary Roderick Galdes, has been accused of taking a pro-hunting and trapping stance since Labour was returned to power. A presentation it made to the Ornis Committee, which groups hunters and conservationists in making recommendations to the government, turned out to be a purely scholarly exercise, without any reference to the fact that trapping had been phased out for good in 2008 according to the EU accession treaty, and that two Commission infringements on trapping were still standing.

After the WBRU’s presentation, the Prime Minister said he was fully aware that finch trapping would be met with strong opposition from the European Commission and that yet another infringement would be more than possible, effectively spelling the end of any trapping in future.

But he also told the Cabinet that he did not want to be the one to stop trapping.

The downsizing of finch-trapping had been clearly enshrined in the transitional section of Malta’s EU accession treaty, with four years granted starting from 2004 to carry out the captive breeding programme.

Trappers in Malta were known for their wanton destruction of natural habitats and of taking over private and public land. But in the mad rush before accession in 2003, the Fenech Adami administration had added 400 trappers from Gozo – trappers who had never paid a licence and who had trapping sites on public land or land they had no title over – to the population of registered trappers.

The WBRU also presented a false picture to the Cabinet on Malta’s right to derogate from the ban on trapping, by claiming that other countries in the EU trap finches. The WRBU representative told the Cabinet that Spain, France and Austria allow finch trapping, but no one from the Cabinet asked any specific questions about the practice. 

But the finch trapping the WBRU representative referred to was the limited capture of canary finches on the Canary Islands, and the capture and release of 500 bullfinches in Austria.

On the other hand, the same representative even failed to inform the Cabinet that the accession treaty had a strict transitional period that could not be revisited. Instead the representative gave the impression that a derogation on trapping was still possible.

The trapping of finches was such a contentious issue that the Treaty described in detail that the derogation for the finch species of linnet, greenfinch, goldfinch, siskin, serin, chaffinch and hawfinch could be deliberately captured until 31 December, 2008. The Treaty specified that the Maltese could use traditional nets known as clap-nets within the Maltese islands exclusively for the purpose of keeping them in captivity, in accordance with very clear targets.

But in 2003, the Maltese government had failed to establish all the registered trapping sites; and a pilot study for a captive breeding project and a study on mortality of finches in captivity was to have been presented, with the number and types of species held and bred in aviaries assessed, as well as present to the European Commission an information programme for implementation of a captive breeding system.

The Treaty spoke of a captive breeding programme to be introduced by 30 June, 2005 but this was never implemented.

It also specified that by 31 December, 2006 the success of the captive breeding system as well as the mortality rate of birds within the established captive breeding system should have been assessed. And furthermore, by June 2007 the number of captured wild birds required to sustain genetic diversity was to have been assessed.

It was only after this target, that the treaty envisaged that by 31 December, 2007, the Malta Ornis Committee would establish the number of wild specimens per species that may be captured in line with the Directive to ensure sufficient genetic diversity of the captive species.

The minister then responsible for implementing these transitional changes was George Pullicino.

After 2004 the hunting and trapping issue was not considered a priority and Lino Farrugia’s decision to stand and eventually fare miserably in the European Parliament elections gave the government the false impression that the hunters were a spent force.

The European Commission is unaware that the majority of the Ornis Committee’s members, who rubber-stamped the trapping decision, are politically appointed by animal rights parliamentary secretary Roderick Galdes himself.

Autumn trapping will be accompanied by a quota which is next to impossible to enforce: that of 26,000 finches. Over the past few years, the authorities were unable to stop illegal clap-net trapping, let alone control the number that are ‘legally’ trapped.

The chairman of the Ornis committee, a former Birdlife Malta member, university lecturer Mark Anthony Falzon, has abstained on two separate occasions: when the spring hunting season was given a green light and now on the decision to have an autumn trapping season.