A report launched by BirdLife Malta yesterday showed that local and international birdwatchers witnessed 209 incidents of illegal hunting and trapping during the two-week-long Raptor Monitoring Camp that came to an end last Sunday.

These incidents included 109 protected birds being shot at which in many cases led to the injury or killing of these species, including 42 honey buzzards (kuccard), 15 European bee-eaters (qerd in-nahal) and 13 march harriers (bghadan homor). Additionally, the birdwatchers observed a minimum of 39 protected birds in flight with gunshot-related injuries.

These injuries involved either dangling broken legs or clearly-visible gunshot damage to the wings. The report also shows that illegal hunting incidents were recorded in a total of 17 different locations during the Raptor Camp. Of these, Laferla Cross registered the highest amount of such incidents followed by Nadur Tower and Girgenti.

BirdLife stated that since the opening of the autumn hunting season, it has received 11 injured or dead protected birds with gunshot wounds, in addition to the 109 incidents of shooting at or killing of protected species the teams witnessed during the raptor camp.

“This report summarises the illegal hunting activity we witnessed during the Raptor Camp and it will form part of the final report being drafted which will focus on the ornithological data collected by the field teams during the camp. BirdLife Malta will also be submitting a proposal to the government for the improvement of law enforcement efforts with the aim of rendering it more effective in the future,” explained Tolga Temuge, executive director of BirdLife Malta.

BirdLife also commented on how illegal hunting declined as Raptor Camp built up, possibly also due to the bird watchers acting as a deterrent to illegal hunters who were now fully aware of their presence on the field.

“However, we could only observe a set number of sites on a daily basis and therefore, our report is only limited to what we could witness and does not represent the real scale of illegal hunting activity that occurred during the last few weeks,” said Mr Temuge.

The BirdLife report also shows that during the second week of Raptor Camp, the teams heard a total of 196 shots (on 74 occasions) after 3pm when hunting was not allowed. “While our teams still witnessed incidents of illegal hunting even after 3pm, there was a marked decrease observed by all our teams,” said Mr Temuge.

During the two weeks of Raptor Camp, BirdLife teams were posted around various public sites in Malta and Gozo with the aim of observing bird migration. The teams went out into the field for six hours in the afternoon for observation purposes. When a roost of birds of prey took place (that is, birds spending the night in Malta to rest rather than continuing their migration), a team was sent out between 5am and 8am to monitor the departure of the roosting birds the next morning.

A welcome surprise to BirdLife Malta was the fact that some of the international volunteers chose to stay on beyond Raptor Camp to help the organisation to continue to monitor the autumn migration of birds and also to volunteer at BirdLife’s nature reserves.

“Many of the international scientists and ornithologists who participated in this year’s camp explained how Malta would be an ideal destination for birdwatchers if illegal killing of protected species came to an end. It is both economic and political suicide for any government to turn its back to this niche Malta can tap into, instead choosing to allow uncontrolled hunting activity that occurs almost everywhere in the Maltese countryside,” Temuge concluded.