Following the end of this year's spring hunting season, BirdLife Malta notes that it was once again a season 'riddled with illegalities', mainly the targeting of protected birds including the European Turtle-dove (Gamiema).

"While Minister Clint Camilleri knows that the European Commission is not happy with his decision to open a spring hunting season on the protected Turtle-dove, he is also aware that this was illegal and breaches the EU Birds Directive, which specifically does not allow any hunting in spring on this species due to its vulnerable status," BirdLife said.

"To add insult to injury, it was also another season where hunters were witnessed breaking the law with widespread use of electronic callers and targeting of Turtledoves illegally during the first week when only Common Quail (Summiena) could be shot. This also included a number of cases of illegal trapping of Turtle-doves. Such birds are then declared as being bred in captivity and used to greenwash the hunting activity effects on biodiversity by releasing them back into the wild."

 BirdLife Malta Head of Conservation Nicholas Barbara said: "This season was once again marred with the hunting of protected birds, from birds of prey like Marsh-harriers, Common Kestrels, Red-footed Falcons and Ospreys, to others like Nightjars, Bee-eaters, Golden Orioles and Hoopoes. The illegally shot birds retrieved by BirdLife Malta and police are only the few birds which hunters do not manage to get hold of, and represent an indicator to the level of illegal killing of various protected species that ensues whenever Malta opens a hunting season during the spring migration of these European species. While over 8,000 hunters were given a licence to practice for three weeks of hunting season, thousands of protected birds were massacred to be added to personal taxidermy collections under the 1997 and 2003 amnesties, a practice further revived thanks to recent changes in legislation issued before the last election, while the Wild Birds Regulation Unit (WBRU) remains a spectator rather than a regulator to this illegal trade in wildlife."

 During the period between 10 and 30 April, BirdLife Malta recovered a total of 18 shot birds belonging to 15 protected species, whilst Environmental Protection Unit (EPU) police retrieved a further 16 illegal hunting casualties, BirdLife said.

"Even more birds seen or found with shotgun injuries included Grey, Night and Purple Herons, Hobby, Cuckoo, Woodchat Shrike and even a Yellow-legged Gull. All in all, our annual Spring Watch camp - which fielded an average of just three teams a day across a number of watchpoints in Malta and Gozo - has witnessed over 208 illegal hunting incidents during the period," the NGO said.

It said that the lack of control over the hunting of protected species spanned also to the target species of the spring hunting derogation - the red-listed Turtle-dove and Common Quail - "supposedly controlled by quotas allocated for the season."

BirdLife Malta reiterated that there is no doubt that the national hunting bag limit of Turtle-doves was exceeded.

"The climax proving the lack of control on hunting activity was the fact that hunters themselves admitted they could not access the digital game reporting system."

Nicholas Barbara added: "The lack of control on the hunting derogation and the impunity of the hunting community was this year shown through new phenomena such as luring and killing of Nightjars, the luring of Turtle-doves with electronic callers as well as the hunting of Turtle-doves before 17 April. In one particular case a hunter persisted in hunting after being caught red-handed hunting Turtledoves before 17 April."

BirdLife Malta CEO Mark Sultana concluded: "The season was clearly a free-for-all with a very evident mass movement of hunters on the island of Gozo not matched by police enforcement. The lack of enforcement on Gozo is also indicated by the significant number of cases of shot protected birds retrieved from the island. The end result remains that hunters in Malta and Gozo are getting used to getting away with targeting protected birds. If one had to compare the last five years since 2018 to date with the previous five years (2013-3017) one would realise that the amount of illegally shot protected birds has nearly trebled."

Malta has failed to protect migratory birds during their spring migration during the past three weeks and has opened fire on a vulnerable species which the rest of Europe is doing efforts to protect, the NGO said.

"Malta shrugged off requests by EU Member States and the European Commission (EC) not to open a spring hunting season on the Turtle-dove. It thus appears, as is expected, that the derogation's scrutiny by the EC should initiate immediately as this is the only remedy to prevent a repeat of this next year."