As regular CFZ-watchers will know, for some time Corinna has been doing a column for Animals & Men and a regular segment on On The Track... particularly about out-of-place birds and rare vagrants. There seem to be more and more bird stories from all over the world hitting the news these days so, to make room for them all - and to give them all equal and worthy coverage - she has set up this new blog to cover all things feathery and Fortean.

Monday 27 May 2019

ITALY AND MALTA ARE HOTBEDS OF SONGBIRD POACHING. MEET THE PEOPLE FIGHTING TO STOP IT.


BY MATTEO CIVILLINI 12 MAY 2019
Volunteers are squaring off against smugglers who traffic thousands of birds a year.
CAGLIARI, ITALY - As a choir of songbirds creates a melodic soundtrack, 10 anti-poaching activists are hiding out among dense shrubs in the mountains overlooking this city on the southern Italian island of Sardinia. They’re hoping to spot an illegal bird trapper who’s known to be active in the area. “This guy is like a Swiss clock,” says Giovanni Malara, the team’s leader. “He checks his nets and heads back at exactly the same time every day.”
Moments later, a turquoise motorbike comes racing down a narrow dirt road. “That’s him,” Malara exclaims. Now the second part of the operation—finding his bird traps—begins.
The activists, members of the Committee Against Bird Slaughter (CABS), a conservation organisation that conducts anti-poaching operations, fan out to check the motion-sensor cameras they’d hidden the day before. They hoped that images from the cameras would point them to the path used by the alleged poacher to reach his trapping sites. The activists would then search the ground for clues—footprints, shreds of fabric—that would lead them to the “mist” nets he’d placed to snag birds in flight. Typically suspended between two poles, they’re called mist nets because they’re made of thread so fine that birds don’t see them.
On that day in February 2019, the CABS team failed to locate the trapping stations. But two days later, as more clues emerged through their on-the-ground activities, they found 28 nets. Malara says the evidence was handed over to the local police, who are continuing the investigation.


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