Illegally shot birds in Malta have trebled in four years

The number of protected birds diagnosed by BirdLife Malta as having been illegally shot stood at 181 in 2021, a “small fraction” representing the public’s finds of dead birds, the NGO reported today.

BirdLife today released data showing a total of 794 illegally shot protected birds found by the general public in the last eight years.

The upward trend stood out with 76% of these finds being in the last four years. From 2014 to 2017, there were 190 birds diagnosed as illegally shot, while in the past four years, from 2018 to 2021, this more than trebled to 604.

“It is fair to conclude that thousands of other protected birds such as birds of prey, Flamingos and herons were illegally shot down and collected by the culprits, mainly for taxidermy purposes,” BirdLife CEO Mark Sultana said.

The data does not include illegally trapped finches under a controversial ‘scientific’ derogation created by the Maltese government to derogate from the EU’s ban on finch trapping.

BirdLife says the derogation acts as a smokescreen and has already been heavily challenged by the European Commission, which will now take Malta to the EU’s Court of Justice.

“The abuse of such a derogation is so rampant that in just a few months BirdLife Malta received 926 protected finches for rehabilitation, following which they are released back into the wild. A further 120 protected birds were also illegally trapped with the same methods,” Sultana said.

Sultana accused the government of not taking illegal hunting and trapping seriously even after the EC initiated legal action against Malta.

BirdLife Malta will be presenting its data figures along with video and photographic evidence to the European Commission.

“There are various reasons why rampant illegal killing is on the rise in Malta,” Sultana said. “We believe the lack of discipline by the hunters along with a government bending over backwards and sideways to give in to the hunting lobby’s demands for weaker laws, weaker enforcement, and more derogations from the Birds Directive, are the main cause.

“We are still suffering from two big mistakes taken in the past by governments, both Labour and Nationalist, that had given amnesties to thousands of hunters that had declared over half a million illegally shot protected birds. Vetting of these lists had stopped, making it easy for protected birds being shot today to also be forgiven under those amnesties.”

Making matters worse are delays on making certain areas notorious for poaching, like Qawra Point, a no-hunting zone.

“While the Minister of Environment publicly stated this following the massacre of protected Greater Flamingos in the area, it seems he failed to find the support from the rest of the Government. We demand both parties to stop being spineless towards those who break the law and start taking illegal killing and trapping seriously,” Sultana said.