[WATCH] Hunting contraventions rise as less police deployed to hotspots - CABS

The Campaign Against Bird Slaughter said that a total of 221 contraventions of hunting laws and bird protection rules were witnessed and recorded by monitoring teams during 14 days of operations during the autumn hunting season.

These contraventions included 48 cases of the shooting at or killing of protected species by at least 61 different individuals, as well as 41 protected birds observed with obvious shotgun injuries or found dead.

CABS coordinator Axel Hirschfield said that while increased police presence was visible during the spring season, it was a reasonable expectation that these additional personnel would also be made available in autumn. “However, although many more birds use Malta as a rest area at this time, and more than twice as many hunters are present in the countryside than in spring, reinforcement of the ALE was negligible,” Hirschfield said.

Comparison of the data from the years 2010 and 2011 show that the total of incidents of shooting down and shooting at protected bird species, as well as finds of dead birds and sightings of protected species with obvious shotgun injuries, has noticeably increased from 50 (in autumn 2010) to 67 (autumn 2011).

This year’s CABS autumn bird protection camp took place from 9-25 September. A total of 24 volunteers from Bulgaria, Germany, Great Britain, Italy and Malta participated in the autumn 2011 camp.

According to CABS, extremely bad weather in South and Central Italy led to a noticeably smaller number of strong migration days in comparison to the same period in autumn 2009 and 2010. This meant that there were correspondingly fewer birds of prey on passage or resting overnight on the islands.

On the other hand there has been a decrease in the number of incidents involving illegal trapping and contraventions against the afternoon hunting curfew (121 shots in autumn 2010; 96 in autumn 2011).

A further incident took place in the fields between Fiddien und Mtahleb, where some 80 Marsh Harriers had come to roost in the early evening. Around 9pm, a team from BirdLife Malta on the spot witnessed how a number of persons suddenly appeared at the roost with torches and fired several shots into the grounded flock of dazzled birds.

A CABS team summoned by BirdLife to assist scanned the area with a thermal imaging video camera and were able to make out five persons sitting in a darkened vehicle parked on a closed off track immediately adjacent to the roost.

The video material was handed over to the police who identified the vehicle owner and called him in for questioning. The man at first denied being present at the scene but, after being confronted with the video film, admitted to having been in the vicinity of the Marsh Harriers.

It is not known if or what further action was undertaken by the police.

“There is still a great deal of room for improvement in bird protection on Malta,” CABS coordinator Axel Hirschfield said in the group’s report for their autumn hunting monitoring camp.

“The most important objective from a bird conservation point of view still continues to be an appropriate reinforcement of the ALE environmental police unit, which was again hopelessly undermanned this autumn.

“The spring hunting season in April this year demonstrated that resources can be made available for the unit if necessary. In April 2011, in order to meet the European Commission requirement for strict monitoring of the controversial hunting of birds on pre-nuptial migration, the ALE was temporarily reinforced by some 40 additional police officers to monitor hunting.”

Hirschfield said it was often impossible for the few available patrols during autumn to react in a timely fashion to all reports from the CABS teams. “The consequence was, as in previous years, that on a number of occasions the police officers arrived after the poachers observed by us had left the scene, or had had sufficient time to conceal or otherwise dispose of weapons or dead birds.”

Hirschfield said that at present Malta is a long way from fulfilling its EU obligations.

“We will continue to press for a long-overdue adequate reinforcement and better equipping of the ALE, both at government level in Valletta as well as with the European Commission in Brussels… It is now up to the responsible politicians and civil servants in Valletta and Brussels to finally act on these facts and ensure that adequate skilled resources are made available to effectively deal with illegal bird hunting on Malta.”