Trappers unhappy with new regulations will seek legal redress

Changes to trapping regulations made recently have not gone down well with the trapping community, with the Federation for Hunting and Conservation claiming an injustice was committed.

On 20 October, amendments were made to the trapping regulations, on the eve of trapping season. The FKNK said it had issue with four of the changes, including the size of net mesh used to trap birds.

While the law now states that the mech size should not be less than 45mm x 45mm, the FKNK lamented that this was too big and the song thrush could easily slip through.

The federation said the adequate minimum net mesh size should be 32mm x 32mm, citing legal requirements in Italy, where the live capture of the song thrush is similarly permitted.

The FKNK was against the active participation of NGOS in enforcement, insisting this was “potentially biased” as many of the groups involved have “declared on numerous occasions that their aim is to stop hunting.” It claimed that this shows a clear conflict of interest.

“This amendment has been a long-time desire of both local organisation, BirdLife Malta, and German-based organisation CABS, for them to be able to acquire such power.  This Regulation is an insult toward the efficiency and hard work of the police force… the FKNK however has no problem to co-operate with the police when and if asked to do so by them.”

Moreover, the FKNK took issue with the publication of locations for the privately-owned trapping stations.

“The FKNK cannot begin to understand how this regulation got to see the light of day, making trapping stations information public when such a subject was already the merit of a request made in 2016 by Birdlife Malta to the Data Protection Commissioner, and which request was rejected both by the Commissioner for Data Protection and by the Information and Data Protection Appeals board in April 2018," the FKNK said.

The FKNK has objected to regulations regarding bird callers during hours when trapping is prohibited.

“Whilst the Federation makes it clear that it condemns illegal use of bird callers, on the other hand, the introduction of regulations by which a trapping station may be deregistered, lacks basic principles of law, is open to third parties abuse and is dangerous in practice," the federation said.

It noted that when this regulation was proposed on 10 October at the Ornis Committee meeting, the FKNK representatives objected.

The FKNK said it wanted these injustices recitified and insisted it will be writing to the European Commission in protest.