An updated report outlining BirdLife’s recommendations to clamp down on the ongoing and widespread illegal hunting and trapping in the Maltese islands will be re-submitted to the Office of the Prime Minister on Monday, BirdLife Malta revealed today. Although it has been more than one and a half years since the submission of the original report, BirdLife Malta has not yet received feedback from the OPM.

The report is written based on the advice received by BirdLife from wild life crime experts abroad, ex-military and ex-police officers and lawyers in Malta. The report explains the importance of the Maltese islands in terms of wild bird migration as over 170 species of wild birds from at least 48 countries (36 in Europe and 12 in Africa) use Malta during migration, highlighting the importance of effective law enforcement in Malta on the conservation efforts in other countries.

In the law enforcement section, the report draws attention to the chronic lack of resources and equipment available to the Administrative Law Enforcement Units and states that the district police are in no way in a position to act as effectively as the ALE. Official figures obtained from CMRU and highlighted in the report show that during 2 months in spring 2008 for example, the ALE arraigned 161 individuals, whilst the entire district police force only arraigned 14 individuals.

The report underlines the importance of intelligence led policing to improve the success rate of the law enforcement units and also suggest that some of the operations are carried out in plain clothes with unmarked vehicles. This would counter the fact that in many illegal hunting hotspots, poachers have look-outs posted in strategic locations and when they observe a police vehicle they communicate this information immediately to their friends either through the mobile phones or by radio.

BirdLife’s recommendations emphasize the importance of establishing a Wild Life Crimes Unit (as part of ALE) that would focus solely on crimes related to Malta’s wild life throughout the year. The report suggests that this Unit is reinforced and supplemented by the other ALE officers and with members of the Armed Forces during the hunting season and peak migration periods.

Under the MEPA section, the BirdLife report explains that the MEPA Environment Inspectorate has been drastically reduced by the government over the last few years, and there is now only one single individual left at the Inspectorate fully dedicated for enforcement actions related to the protection of the natural environment.

The BirdLife report states that "Although according to the recent MEPA reform, the Office of the Prime Minister says that officials responsible for enforcement are distributed to different departments within the Authority, this does not negate the fact that there is still only one enforcement official who deals with bird crime and illegal hunting and trapping, a situation which has unbelievably dragged on for a couple of decades, ever since the establishment of an Environment Inspectorate in the early 1990s with the Environment Protection Department."

BirdLife also recommends that an immediate tagging system is put in place for the stuffed birds in hunters’ possession as this would allow law enforcement officers to check that birds are in fact those that were declared under the amnesty and not fresh specimens. Around 500,000 birds were declared to MEPA during the amnesties but were never checked.

Under the section on judiciary, BirdLife draws attention to the fact that minimum fines for repeat offenders are currently insufficient to act as a deterrent and should therefore start from the maximum fine for first time offenders. The report also reveals that there is currently no centralised digital database within the courts to keep a record of repeat offenders, a situation which further hampers the ability of Magistrates to adequately deal with those individuals who consistently break the law. This approach should also be welcomed by hunters who do not break the law, as it will have no effect on them, but will result in a decrease in repeat offenders, the report states.

The Justice and Home Affairs Ministry is in the process of analysing firearms legislation, and in the process should give due consideration to the licensing of hunting shotguns, BirdLife recommends. The law should be amended such that individuals applying for a shotgun license must sit a course on weapons handling, health and safety issues related to using such a weapon, wild life law and conservation implications of responsible and sustainable hunting.

The report highlights the fact that opening a spring hunting season creates a blanket season for poachers targeting protected species and puts an additional pressure on the ALE as with current lack of resources the police force can hardly cope with illegal hunting, let alone strictly supervising a derogation, the report argues.

BirdLife’s other recommendations include public awareness campaigns led by the authorities, a free of charge "Hot Line" dedicated to "Wild Life Crimes" made available to the public, involvement of AFM in law enforcement for wildlife crimes, and the removal of illegally built hunting and trapping hides on public land and in Natura 2000 sites.

BirdLife is currently running an international petition asking Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi to ensure that all hunting legislation is fully enforced, and never to allow spring shooting or trapping of Turtle Dove and Quail again. The petition can be signed at www.birdlifemalta.org

Photograph by BirdLife Malta shows Volunteers searching Mizieb for the remains of dead birds in the presence of police last September. The remains of over 200 dead protected birds, some freshly killed, others months old, were found over the two day search.

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