College student gets over 10 yrs' jail for poaching rare birds

Press Trust of India  |  Beijing December 2, 2015 Last Updated at 16:22 IST

A Chinese court today sentenced two persons, including a college student, to 10 years in prison for hunting 12 endangered birds during summer vacation and selling them online.

The court of Huixian county in central China's Henan province heard that Yan, born in 1994, was college student in Zhengzhou, capital of Henan.

He caught 12 Eurasian hobbies on July 14 last year with a friend surnamed Wang.

One of the birds died while another escaped.

The remaining 10 were sold via the internet for more than 1,000 yuan (about USD 156).

The pair caught two more Eurasian hobbies on July 27, as well as two other falcons, before they were put into custody by the forestry police bureau of Huixian county.

Yan also bought a crested goshawk illegally. 

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Bird poaching continues to result in victims

Date: November 23, 2015

Source: Plataforma SINC

Illegal hunting continues to be a challenge for biodiversity conservation in addition to posing a serious threat to some migratory species. The province of Gipuzkoa in northern Spain, a transit area for birds migrating between Africa and Europe, is an example of just how this illegal activity can severely affect these animals.

Over the course of the year, dozens of birds will arrive to the Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre in Gipuzkoa with firearm-inflicted wounds, evidence that there are still illegal activities taking place which threaten biodiversity conservation. The information provided by the Centre has allowed for identification of the most affected species as well as the relationship between hunting ground locations and the areas where the birds were found harmed.

Researchers from the Aranzadi Society of Sciences (Gipuzkoa) analysed data from 2006 to 2013 in order to pinpoint what species arrived to the Rehabilitation Centre, where they had been found and their reason for being admitted to the centre.

Juan Arizaga, co-author of the study, explains that a statistical method was used to determine whether the distances between the birds shot at and the nearest fixed hunting stands measured less than the distances between those birds admitted to the centre for other reasons, such as collisions.

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Nearly 1m birds were killed on British military base in Cyprus, says RSPB

Poachers took 15,000 birds every day for two months last autumn on Dhekelia Sovereign Base Area as conservationists warn killing is at unprecedented levels

Karl Mathiesen

Monday 9 March 2015 06.01 GMTLast modified on Monday 9 March 201507.57 GMT

Almost a million birds were illegally killed in just two months on a British military base in Cyprus last year, according to the RSPB.

Dr Tim Stowe, the RSPB’s international director, called on the Ministry of Defence(MoD) to do more to stop local poachers, who reportedly took 15,000 birds every day during September and October from British Dhekelia Sovereign Base Area (SBA).

“The report highlights the illegal trapping of songbirds on the British military base has escalated and we are urging the Ministry of Defence and the Base Area authorities to resolve it before this autumn’s migration,” said Stowe.

But the MoD rejected the RSPB’s findings and questioned the methodology of the survey.

“We do not accept the report’s unverified claims about loss of bird life during this period, which was based upon data collected from a very short period,” said an MoD spokeswoman.

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Bird poaching goes on, actions rare

A section of locals are engaged in hunting of birds, especially herons, posing threat to the stock of the graceful creature of nature.

A poacher sold five herons at Balapukur Bazar in Aditmari upazila of Lalmonirhat for Tk 150 to 200 each on Monday afternoon.

“I trap the birds in different areas and sell them at different markets without facing any obstacle from law enforcers or locals. Some people put order in advance to buy heron,” said the poacher, Jalal Hossain, 45, from Batrish Hazari village of Lalmonirhat Sadar upazila.

“I catch birds to earn a living. Many others in the district do the same. I do not know of any law against bird hunting,” he said.

Herons come to the beel (large water body) to eat puti maachh (an indigenous fish) but the birds are caught in the poachers’ traps set with the fish.

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