Since the opening of the autumn season on 1
September, BirdLife Malta has received 62 shot protected birds- nearly double
the total of 33 shot protected birds recovered over the same period last year.
This is the worst autumn hunting season since the organization started keeping
detailed records of shot birds in 2007.
Over 60% of the shot protected birds were birds
of prey, including rare species in Europe such as the Pallid Harrier.
Furthermore during BirdLife's international
bird monitoring Raptor Camp the conservation organization recorded an
additional 124 injured protected birds in flight with visible gunshot injuries,
and a further 106 protected birds being shot at or shot down by illegal
hunters.
Commenting on the present situation, BirdLife
Malta Conservation Manager, Nicholas Barbara said “We have been witnessing
widespread and commonplace illegal shooting and killing of protected species
this autumn. The nearly 300 protected birds we witnessed being killed or
received are just those we could record with our limited resources. We suspect
that with the shot birds directly reported to the authorities and the
unrecorded incidences, thousands of protected birds have been killed this
autumn.
The flood of dead and injured protected birds
received during the autumn hunting season has overwhelmed the Maltese
authorities to the extent that the National Museum of Natural History, the
Malta Police Force, as well as MEPA have no more capacity to store the
carcasses of shot birds.
BirdLife Malta alone recorded 567 incidences of
illegal hunting at 40 different locations in Malta and Gozo during its Raptor
Camp in September.
With a daily average of just 3 police vehicles
observed patrolling the countryside, the mean response time to illegal hunting
incidents reported to police by Raptor Camp teams was 50 minutes.
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