Bird trappers with unregistered trapping sites issued with ‘special permit’

The Committee Against Bird Slaughter has accused bird trapper of poaching thousands of wild birds with impunity due to “blatant political backing” paralysing the government’s Wild Birds Regulatoary Authority (WBRU).

CABS accused the regulator of “systematic incompetence” after witnessing police officers in the field without any maps, tablets, or any tool to enable them to distinguish between legal and illegal sites.

The trapping season was opened on 20 October without the publication of GPS data of the registered trapping sites three days before the season, which is obligatory according to the new framework legislation released on the same day.

“Police and public were unaware of rules until that point,” CABS Wildlife Crime Officer Fiona Burrows said.

“To make matters worse, the ‘enforcement hotline’ from WBRU – like the whole concept of the so-called study – seems to exist only on paper. We tried to reach them at least 12 times at various times of the day and from different numbers, but nobody replied.”

Since the beginning of the season last Friday, CABS identified over 110 active finch trapping sites not listed in the GPS data of permitted sites published by the WBRU no 20 October.

In recent days, inspections with the police revealed that half of all bird trappers were being granted a “special permit” from WBRU despite their trapping sites not being listed in the public database.

“We understand that a huge number of sites are either missing or their locations have been incorrectly plotted by up to 70m,” Burrows said.

“With wrong data, enforcement officers will be incapacitated and unable to validate targeted checks or focus on poachers who take advantage of the enforcement chaos.”

Despite these difficult conditions, CABS and members of the Environment Protection Unit (EPU) of the police were able to catch several bird poachers over the weekend. Among them were two participants of the government’s “research study” trapping season, who were caught trapping with more than the permitted number of clap-nets in Dingli.

The police dismantled the traps, confiscated all nets and more than 50 live finches. Both poachers were identified and will be investigated for trapping infringements.

Three large clap nets were also found inside the Miżieb woodland. The EPU were called and removed the illegal traps, the poacher managed to escape.

On Monday, a CABS team on Gozo led the police to four trapping sites in Marsalforn and Xewkija which turned out to be without any permit and were therefore also dismantled. Photos published by CABS show officers of the EPU and of the Gozo police on site handling protected birds and removing illegal nets.

CABS also reported that illegal trapping was already rampant in the weeks before the official opening of the season, with a total of 27 illegal sites being shut down and more than 90 birds confiscated following CABS’s reports alone.

“One of them resulted in the arrest of a man who had set up his clap-net on a narrow green strip in the middle of the government quarter of the capital Valletta – just 250 metres from the headquarters of the Maltese police,” CABS said. A pair of large clap-nets and 12 live decoy birds, including siskins, linnets and hawfinches were confiscated and later released.

CABS also published a video documenting lack of EPU and resources on Gozo where a young, masked man has been illegally setting up a clap-net to catch finches. Police were called to the scene, yet the suspect still had ample time to collect six live decoys and flee in plain view of the police.