Over 800,000 songbirds, such as
blackcaps and robins, are estimated to have been illegally killed on a British
military base in Cyprus last autumn, where illegal trapping activity remains
around its highest ever levels, according to a new report.
New research by the RSPB and
BirdLife Cyprus shows that the number of nets used to trap birds remains around
record levels on British Territory, with an increase of 183% since the
illegal-killing monitoring programme began in 2002.
The songbirds are illegally
trapped and killed to provide restaurants with the main ingredient for the
local and expensive delicacy of ambelopoulia- a plate of cooked songbirds.
Organised crime gangs are driving this illegal activity on a huge scale and it
is estimated they earn millions of Euros every year from the songbirds they
kill on British territory.
Between August and October 2016
the small British Sovereign Base Area (SBA) police force, supported by
specialist surveillance help from RSPB Investigations staff, opened more cases
and confiscated more mist nets - long lines of near invisible netting - than
ever previously recorded. However, the SBA Administration were largely forced
to abandon their most successful tool against this criminal activity- removal
of the invasive Australian acacia trees which trappers have planted on MoD land
in order to lure the birds in- due to the trappers organising large protests
and a dramatic blockade. Whereas the Base authorities had successfully removed
54 acres of acacia in the preceding two years, this autumn they were only able
to remove a further 7 acres, leaving around 90 acres of this illegal-killing
infrastructure still standing on the British firing range.
Trappers also blatantly and
extensively deploy electronic calling devices on the firing range at night in
order to lure in birds to their deaths and there are concerns that parts of the
British firing range are effectively becoming a no-go area for the committed
but significantly outnumbered local police force.
Martin Harper, RSPB Conservation
Director, said: “This report sadly highlights that the British base is the
number one bird killing hotspot on the whole island of Cyprus. “Many much loved
garden bird species are being trapped and killed for huge profit by criminal
gangs. The trappers’ brazen prevention of the removal of their criminal
infrastructure from MoD land could never be tolerated here in the UK. The UK
Government must therefore provide enforcement support to help the Base
authorities respond to the trappers and safely remove the remaining 90 acres of
acacia so that they cannot be used to kill hundreds of thousands more birds.”
The report estimates that over
1.7 million birds could have been killed within the survey area, which covers
both the British base and Cyprus Republic areas, and nearly 2.3 million across
the whole of Cyprus due to this extensive bird trapping activity. This
industrial scale activity has also been confirmed in a scientific paper,
published last year, where Cyprus was identified as one of the worst places for
illegal bird killing in the Mediterranean.
No comments:
Post a Comment