Spring hunting - Bird guards finds over 41 illegal bird callers
German-based bird conservationists Committee Against Bird Slaughter (CABS) have reported hearing illegal electronic bird callers throughout the night in Malta.
During the past two nights in the run-up to opening of the limited spring hunting season yesterday, CABS teams located and mapped more than 41 of these illegal ‘quail lures’ in Ghar Lapsi, Gnejna Bay, Ta’ Baldu, ix-Xaghra il-Hamra, Salina as well as the areas around Zurrieq, Qrendi, Siggiewi, Dingli, Bahrija, Naxxar, Birzebbuga, Ghaxaq, Madliena and the Red Tower.
“In the course of their systematic search operation the bird guards checked about one-third of the island on Friday and Saturday nights. CABS estimate therefore that on the whole of Malta more than 100 calling devices are currently in operation,” the group said in a statement.
A total of 23 hunters disobeyed the hunters’ federation directive and paid for a special spring hunting licence, enabling them to hunt between tomorrow and 30 April up to noon, excluding Sunday.
“In the early hours of Friday morning, as our teams heard the first caller in Gnejna Bay at about 3:30am, we immediately informed the police. Two motorised patrols from Mosta arrived within 20 minutes,” CABS operations officer Axel Hirschfeld said.
“Unfortunately, the officers refused to seize the devices in the dark. The senior officer present justified this on the ground that one of his officers might ‘fall into a well’ or indeed ‘be shot’. The latter fear is a sad reflection of the current aggression, as witnessed in the many violent incidents reported by BirdLife Malta before the arrival of the CABS teams,” Hirschfeld said.
The bird callers are permanently installed devices with which hunters and trappers play the display calls of the quail to attract the live birds.
“These devices play the same call over and over again and are easy to tell apart from their real counterparts,” Hirschfeld said.
The group said that since quail migrate only at night, the devices are fitted with a timer programmed to be active between midnight and dawn.
The operation of artificial decoys for hunting is banned under the EU bird protection guidelines, as well as by Maltese law.
CABS has requested the assistance of the A.L.E. in removing the illegal electronic lures during night operations.
The CABS spring migration team, composed of six bird guards, is recording cases of illegal trapping and shooting of protected bird species and to report offenders to the police. The operations are conducted in close cooperation with BirdLife.
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