I followed with interest the BondiPlus programme on hunting, during which Birdlife (Malta) president Joseph Mangion starting off by claiming that three million migrating birds are caught (shot or captured with nets) over the Maltese islands each year.

Mr Mangion later on watered down this number to two million and further on again changed the figure to 1.5 million. Later, he stated that about one million of these birds are protected by legislation, and that the main purpose of shooting down these birds is to enhance taxidermy collections.

I wish to remark that these figures must be Mr Mangion’s own figures and can only be described as pure guesses. I say this because there is no way that he could substantiate his statements, scientifically or otherwise. Still, working on Mr Mangion’s figures, it is arithmetically very easy to conclude that about 500,000 migratory birds that in turn are not protected by legislation are caught over the Maltese islands each year.

Later on in the programme, Mr Bondi revealed that from official statistics extracted from Maltese hunters carnet de chasse (bagged birds’ records that all licensed hunters are legally bound to compile each year, without which they cannot renew their licence), less than 200,000 birds are caught per annum, a figure Mr Mangion questioned, claiming that this was grossly understated. So, for the purpose of this exercise, I shall assume Mr Mangion’s guess of 500,000 birds to be correct.

Further on in the programme, the presenter again stated that the official number of registered mounted birds to be found in Maltese households is 500,000. At this point Mr Mangion regarded this figure to be grossly inflated, since he is sure that a large number of birds have been registered which, in fact, do not presently exist as mounted pieces, which birds still have to be caught illegally in the future. I will assume, however, that the figure of 500,000 mounted pieces is correct. I will also bear in mind that this figure is not of the number of trophies which are mounted each year but, rather, the number of birds mounted over the last, say, 30 years.

Therefore, using Mr Mangion’s figures, if one million protected birds are taken each year, 30 years taking would add up to 30 million birds. Now, since only 500,000 are to be found mounted in Maltese households, and since these birds are taken mostly for taxidermy purposes, can Mr Mangion please account for the other 29.5 million?

Mario Farrugia

Naxxar