FKNK official fined €1,000 for carrying shotgun in nature reserve

FKNK official Edwin Vella has been fined €1,000 and banned from hunting for one year after admitting to poaching inside the Foresta 2000 nature reserve in Mellieha.

Vella sits on a FKNK district committee, but he will not be expelled, the FKNK secretary-general Lino Farrugia told MaltaToday yesterday. The hunters' lobby claims Vella entered the reserve with a shotgun to collect a bird he had felled.

BirdLife Malta wants the FKNK to resign its seat on the spring hunting derogation monitoring committee unless Vella is expelled. The NGO manages the Foresta 2000 site.

Another hunter, Christian Gauci of Mellieha, was fined €4,658 and banned from hunting for three years after admitting to illegal hunting at the Foresta 2000. Another hunter, Carl Borg, pleaded not guilty to the same charges.