David Darmanin
Revealing the results of a survey it conducted, hunting lobby FKNK yesterday said that among 4,000 licensed trappers, 98.57% were convinced that alternatives for finch trapping do not exist.
“The overwhelming majority believe that they have a civil right to continue practicing their passion, provided that government has the political will to correctly apply a derogation from the EU ‘Birds’ Directive to permit limited finch-capturing,” FKNK council member Joseph Lia said in a statement.
“Autumn 2009 will go down in history as the first autumn in which the Maltese trapper was not permitted to pursue the traditional socio-cultural passion of finch-capturing,” he said.
Finch trapping is banned as from 2009 under the Birds Directive. The law also bans spring hunting, but the government is derogating from the ban after it accepted a recommendation from the Ornis Committee for a spring hunting season that will open throughout April.
1.43% of respondents to the FKNK survey replied that they had “lost all faith” in ever again being permitted to capture finches in the traditional manner. The federation claims that it is only for this reason that trapper were unsuccessfully experimenting with alternatives.
“The abolition of finch-capturing may have resulted in a minimal increase in finch sightings this winter,” Lia said. “FKNK members reported seeing up to three linnets and eight chaffinches in an area where normally only single individuals are sighted. This was reported in the media as a 300% and 800% increase, when the actual number of finches remains negligibly poor.”
FKNK claims that finch-capturing prohibition currently in force is “merely a punitive measure misguidedly and unnecessarily taken against Maltese finch trappers.”
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