Hunting the lawless hunters: CABS to swoop down on Malta

As hunters eagerly oil and assemble their guns for the autumn hunting season, a team of bird loving volunteers is preparing to descend into the Maltese countryside to ensure that they play by the rules. 

Axel Hirschfeld, the press officer of the German-based Committee Against Bird Slaughter (CABS), who will spearhead this autumn’s bird protection camp between 11 September and 4 October, has been visiting Malta regularly since 2000.

As such, he has seen hunting – and the political attitude towards it – evolve. 

“Every country has its own special poaching problem – Malta’s remains the illegal killing of honey buzzards, eagles and falcons,” he told MaltaToday in a phone interview. “However, the illegality has declined dramatically since 2000, when we used to see birds of prey get shot down on a daily basis.

“There are still some rampant poaching hotspots though, next to the airport and Handaq, which is where we’ll be focusing our attention in the upcoming camp.” 

Hirschfeld attributed the decline in illegal hunting to an improved law enforcement system and increasingly harsh poacher penalties. 

For example, last autumn, a CABS team filmed a purple heron getting shot down in Marsaskala and reported it to the police. Despite CABS not having managed to get the hunter on tape, the police still managed to track him down. The hunter was fined €5,000 and had his hunting licence revoked.  

“Shooting protected birds has become much riskier, and if I were a hunter I simply wouldn’t take the risk,” he said. “I am quite optimistic that our presence in the field will act as a deterrent to illegal hunting.” 

Moreover, the Prime Minister has recently introduced a new innovative penalty – the premature closure of the hunting season if he feels that poaching has escalated beyond what is acceptable. Criticised by hunting lobby FKNK as a form of collective punishment, it has been praised by Hirschfeld as a powerful threat. 

“We are no longer in 2000, when politicians used to accept the shooting of protected birds as a part of life,” he said. “Joseph Muscat and the FKNK have both said that they will adopt a stance of zero tolerance with regard to illegal hunting, and I expect them to stick to their promises.

“Closing the season might be collective punishment, but it’s an extremely powerful deterrent – a sword of Damocles hanging over the hunters’ heads.”

Walking into a trap: ‘Government will lose EU battle’ 

While fewer birds of prey are getting gunned down, the situation seems to be in reserve with regard to trapping, since its reintroduction by the Labour government in 2013. Indeed, CABS located around 120 illegal finch trapping sites last spring and reported widespread illegal night trapping of golden plovers last winter.   

Trapping is illegal under EU law and the government’s decision to resurrect it has placed it at risk of getting charged at the European Court of Justice. 

It is an impending battle that Hirschfeld is sure that Malta will lose. 

“Congratulations to the Maltese government for being brave enough to enter that fight, but their bravery could prove very costly,” he warned, arguing that trapping was recently wholly outlawed across Italy and will probably soon be in Spain too. “Finches aren’t even on the Bird Directive’s list of species that can be hunted. Golden plovers are but the list hasn’t been updated in over 40 years, and their populations have declined dramatically since then all over Europe. Only five breeding pairs remain in the whole of Germany.

“How can it be sustainable? Hunters describe sustainability as the harvesting of the surplus population, but how can there be a surplus if the populations have declined so rapidly?”

‘Extended hunting curfew a death sentence for raptors’  

In a move to appease the hunting lobby, the government extended the autumn hunting curfew from 3pm to 7pm, a decision that Hirschfeld has harshly criticised as a “death sentence for birds of prey”. 

“The laziest turtle doves wake up at 9am, and by 10am all of them would have flown off,” he said. “On the other hand, birds of prey arrive late in the afternoon and fly down low. It was much easier for the police to identify poachers under the original curfew, as everybody out with a gun in the afternoon would be breaking the law.” 

While the government has claimed that Malta’s level of field enforcement is the strictest in Europe, Hirschfeld believes that the local police should go a step further. 

“Currently, the Administrative Law Enforcement (ALE) only act when they receive reports of illegal hunting, and the government should consider allowing them to adopt a more pro-active style of enforcement. In many cases, police actually need to camouflage themselves as hunters and head down to the field.”

‘Hunter abuse not a big issue in Malta’ 

Although Hirschfeld himself has been on the receiving end of several physical abuse instances by Maltese hunters, he is the first to admit that their blood has cooled down considerably in recent years. 

“They still threaten us verbally and tell us to go back to our countries on a daily basis,” he says with a chuckle. “That doesn’t bother us though. Hunter abuse isn’t a big issue in Malta – it’s far more dangerous for CABS in France and Cyprus.”

‘Spring hunting referendum loss was not in vain’

The upcoming autumn hunting season will be the first after a historic referendum to ban spring hunting narrowly failed earlier this year. 

The EU subsequently closed a spring hunting infringement against Malta, and Hirschfeld grudgingly admits that spring hunting is here to stay, at least in the short-term. However, with European turtle dove populations declining by 80% in the past 30 years, it could prove to be only a brief victory for hunters. 

“Their population hasn’t risen in any EU country, and if the trend continues then spring hunting will die out some way or another.”

Besides, Hirschfeld can see a silver lining in the referendum loss, with a surge in bird conservation awareness among the Maltese public. 

“Many people who didn’t care about hunting prior to the referendum started to look deeper into it during the SHout campaign and continued to care about it afterwards,” he said. “Indeed, this year has seen a significant increase in locals who have declared interest in participating in the CABS bird protection camp.”