While tensions between hunters and bird conservationists continue to mount in the lead-up to the potential opening of the spring hunting season, Malta was the subject of yet more bad press in two separate pieces on the controversial issue of spring hunting in yesterday’s edition of The (UK) Independent.

The first, an article entitled Conservationists mobilise to halt mass slaughter of birds in Malta, describes Malta’s spring hunting as “Europe’s worst and most senseless wildlife massacre” and cites that bird lovers from the UK and as far afield as the US will be participating in BirdLife Malta’s Spring Watch Malta camp being run between 12 and 29 April.

The article quotes Royal Society for the Protection of Birds international director Alistair Gammell, who is coordinating British volunteers for the camp as observing, “We want to put the Maltese government and Maltese hunters under scrutiny by having people in the field observing. Malta, which is regarded as having the worst bird protection reputation in Europe, has repeatedly refused to comply with European bird hunting and trapping laws. The world needs to witness what’s going on.

“To shoot birds when they are returning on migration and on the point of reproducing the species is just senseless. It’s hugely destructive.”

The article refers to recent tensions, remarking on threatening messages posted on Maltese hunting websites, and the torching of three cars belonging to BirdLife volunteers.

Volunteers will go into the field each day with BirdLife Malta staff to document both the migration and hunting activities. The situation with regard to the hunters is tense and activists at the Spring Watch Malta camp will be told to avoid confrontation.

The article calls for anyone interested in volunteering for the camp to apply through the BirdLife Malta website, or to call the RSPB on a phone number supplied, adding the caveat that “volunteers need to be interested in birds and reasonably fit”.

Mr Gammell was in Malta at the beginning of last year delivering a 115,000-strong petition from RSPB members, which BirdLife Malta and RSPB laid on the doorstep of Castille, calling on the prime minister to “face up to its illegal bird hunting and trapping shame” and to honour its European and international bird protection obligations against spring hunting.

The second article was penned by Mr Gammell himself, who notes, if the spring season is opened again this year that, “There will be an orgy of killing with swallows, birds of prey, warblers, indeed anything with wings being shot.”

He adds, “The RSPB, together with its members and millions of Europeans whose birds are being destroyed, are saying to Malta: end this blot on your reputation; respect the EU’s bird protection laws, make sure those laws are enforced, and stop spring hunting in Malta.

“The fact that Malta is willing to ignore EU law and ignore the particular damage being done by spring hunting is shameful. Worse still, the fact that Maltese hunters can take to the countryside in spring means that no bird will be safe, since sadly they are none too respectful of the law and any bird that crosses their path is likely to be blasted.

“For years, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has campaigned alongside Maltese conservationists against the mass destruction of birds. These birds are not Malta’s – as migrants, which breed in northern Europe and spend winter in Africa, they are a shared heritage belonging to us all and must be protected.”

This spring’s BirdLife camp follows last September’s Raptor Camp, in which over 50 volunteers from Europe participated.