The Federation for Hunting and Conservation – Malta (FKNK) together with the St. Hubert Hunters – Malta (KSU) said in a statement today that they “unreservedly condemn any illegal activities that see the killing of protected bird species.”

Both organisations said they “will stick to their policy of zero tolerance in connection with any such act and any of their members found guilty by the competent courts of committing such acts will have their membership cancelled.”

The statement comes after Birdlife said that the carcasses of 14 gulls, all protected by law, were found in Selmun.

They said, “both the FKNK as well as KSU cannot but notice the standardised campaign that now symbolises Birdlife Malta’s (BLM) attempts to sensationalise such instances rather than nip them in the bud.”

“BLM seem more interested to ensure that it has enough “ammunition” to expose in spring that it is prepared to allow illegalities to continue from December of the previous year rather than to take immediate and decisive action that would have ensured both the safety of birds exposed to further illegalities as well as the capture of the perpetrator. This is especially true since BLM have photographs of one person alleged to have been poaching in the same whereabouts since December 2011,” they said.

The hunters’ organisations continued, “the general public is no longer impressed with personification of animals, and the use of words such as graveyard and tomb in connection with birds is really uncalled for and illusory. However, BLM have to find ways and means to ensure that it continues to receive millions of euro in funding from European citizen taxes for its seabirds’ projects (€1,000,000 in 2006 and €900,000 now).”

They went on to say that the BLM ‘discovery’ does raise a few questions:

“Was this the discoverers first picnic at the same place since last winter? Why did they make the report to BLM and not as should have been done to the police? Gulls at Selmun rarely fly over the ‘grave site,’ so why would anyone shoot a gull at the water’s edge, and then walk, gull/s and all, about a kilometre inland to bury it?”

“BLM concluded their statement by linking the killing of gulls in winter 2011 to the spring season of 2012 and by stating that seven protected birds were shot in the first eight days of the spring hunting season.”

“While reiterating our condemnation of any such bird crime, we also wish to express our satisfaction at this confirmation by BirdLife Malta that the vast majority of the 6500 licensed spring hunters are abiding by the conditions of the spring hunting derogation,” the organisations concluded.

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