BirdLife refused access to data on more than 8,000 bird trapping sites in Malta

The sprawl of trapping sites has resulted in unaccounted destruction of pristine habitats with little or no enforcement, BirdLife Malta has said.

But despite queries sent over the years to publicise some 8,000-plus locations where trapping is authorised, the Environment Ministry has refused to divulge this information quoting privacy issues.

“Information pertaining to where a public authority authorises private and public land to be used for trapping should be of public domain. Preventing such information being made public is tantamount to contributing to the mess of illegal trapping sites impacting our countryside,” BirdLife Malta CEO Mark Sultana said.

BirdLife now awaits a verdict on its appeal filed in court on a Freedom of Information request.

If the case is not ruled in their favour, the eNGO will be forced to seek alternatives, even taking the matter to the EU.

The Aarhus Convention, adopted by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), establishes a number of rights of the public with regards to the environment, including the right to receive environmental information which is held by public authorities.

The authorities claimed that releasing the information would be in breach of data protection laws because it includes names and surnames. But when asked to remove the names but still release the details, the NGO was told that this would be “too laborious,” Sultana told this newspaper.

In 2014, the newly set-up Wild Birds Regulation Unit (WBRU) allowed trappers to register up to two sites per trapping licence where trapping sites could be set up. The rules on the trapping of finches and Song Thrush and Golden Plover, only allow the re-activation of trapping sites if they existed before 2012, as seen from aerial photography, and were not located on protected habitats within Natura 2000 sites.

That vetting process carried out solely by WBRU officials prior to trapping seasons has since then authorised up to 8,000 sites for each trapping season – an area larger than the size of Valletta.

Despite the fact that it is the Environment & Resources Authority (ERA) that is the competent authority on protection of land, it is the WBRU that has been the entity in charge of authorising this land use. During the Ornis Committee meeting on the 10th of May 2017, ERA voted in favour of a finch trapping season on the condition that “compliance and enforcement is guaranteed and implemented by WBRU and the police force”.

According to the Aarhus Convention to which Malta is a signatory, all environmental data should be made public upon a request being filed. Despite this, WBRU has insisted that the data contains private information which cannot be divulged. The WBRU has kept refusing such data to be passed to BirdLife Malta, invoking the Information and Data Protection Commissioner to investigate the matter. In 2016, the Data Protection Commissioner backed the WBRU on their stance and currently an appeal to this decision is being contested by BirdLife Malta in front of the Information and Data Protection Appeals Tribunal.

This follows several reports BirdLife Malta made in 2016 to the WBRU regarding several trapping sites located in coastal areas and within Natura 2000 sites – locations which appeared to be on protected habitat scheduled by ERA.

The WBRU had replied that indeed over 40% of those reported were not registered and the matter had to be passed on for enforcement action. No responses have yet been received from ERA over what enforcement action has resulted.

“Here we have another clear case where the trapping derogation has failed miserably. Finch trapping re-opened in 2014 allowing a multitude of trapping sites to be re-activated and cleared with the authorities not having the capabilities of ensuring any strict enforcement. While the WBRU authorised sites, it was apparently up to ERA to enforce if these were not according to the rules. At the end of it, no authority has taken responsibility and nothing much happened, with the result being a multitude of legal and illegal sites along our coasts active each time a trapping season is opened,” Nicholas Barbara, Conservation Manager at BirdLife Malta, said.

BirdLife said the situation is even worse in comparison to hunting in which members of the public may have the capability of distinguishing a protected species being shot and may report the matter to police.

In the case of trapping sites however, such distinctions cannot be made. Hundreds of trapping sites and public pathways closed to the public can be encountered during a walk in the countryside and yet no information is available whether these sites are operating legally or otherwise. All of this suggests that even if a report was made about a site, two years down the line, these sites will still be possibly active.