A total of 75 protected birds were found illegally shot throughout the autumn hunting season, but this is just a small percentage of the actual number of protected birds shot in the past five months, BirdLife Malta's conservation manager Nik Barbara said.

The autumn hunting season came to a conclusion on 31 January, having been open since the first day of last September, with BirdLife and the police recovering a total of 75 known illegally shot protected birds.  This makes this hunting season one of the worst on record in past years.

"This reflects the situation in 2018 which was a record year in terms of the illegal killing of protected birds in Malta, with a total of 114 known casualties received throughout the full year", BirdLife said in a statement, adding that this figure makes 2018 the worst year in the past six years for illegal hunting.

The figure is, however, only the tip of the iceberg, BirdLife said.  Contacted by this newsroom, the NGO's conservation manager Nik Barbara said that these figures are used to gain an indication of the level of illegal hunting being carried out.  In fact, Barbara said, they are only a small percentage of the birds which are killed, as most are picked up by hunters before passersby can come across them. 

What was worrying this year, Barbara said, was the continuation of an upward trend in the number of shot protected birds; between 2013 and 2015 there had been a decrease, but since 2015 the numbers have been ever-increasing to a peak in 2018. 

This year was also quite remarkable in terms of the different species shot: Barbara cites when a flamingo was shot, along with the decimation of a migrating flock of storks last summer as examples of this.

The reasons for such a continual increase can be varied, but Barbara thinks there is an attitude prevalent where hunters think that they can get away with more.  He noted that this season was a situation wherein people like Prime Minister Joseph Muscat did not share a single condemnation of illegal hunting as had been done in the past.  Such a lack of comment could be pointing towards an acceptance of the current situation, which is worrying, Barbara said.

BirdLife Malta also called for various reforms throughout the past year, namely on laws relating to taxidermy - which state that any hunter is free to own the equipment necessary for taxidermy.  Taxidermy is the main driver for illegal hunting, Barbara explained, and it is the NGO's view that such a regulation opens more of a window for hunting abuse.  Barbara also noted that while there were hundreds of thousands of taxidermy collections on the island, no authority had the resources to check these collections.

BirdLife have also been calling for the establishment of a Wildlife Crime Unit as it was clear that there was not enough resources dedicated to enforcing hunting regulations at the moment.  These suggestions however, Barbara lamented, had thus far been ignored by the authorities as there has been neither reactions nor developments on them.

This all being said, at least the week was closed off with some more positive news: the NGO released four such birds back into the wild; a Short Eared Owl and three Common Kestrels.  These were birds which were shot by hunters and were saved in time and rehabilitated by BirdLife to be released back into the wild.