Malta

Of Bird and Guns

In the heat-lashed early days of autumn, dusty Malta hardly seems like the Garden of Eden, but it is a welcome enough sight for tired and thirsty hundreds of thousands of tired birds migrating between their European summer breeding grounds and the warm winters of Africa. In total, over 170 different species of birds see the tiny Maltese islands as a perfect stop for a bit of rest and recuperation but many of them are given a rude welcome by the estimated 15,000 Maltese hunters waiting for the perfect shot


By CHRISTIAN CUMMINS
from Wien, AUSTRIA


It's a hot afternoon on a coastal road by Malta's jagged Dingli cliffs - a rare spot of calm on a bustlingly built-up island. But the peace isn't to last long. The quiet is broken by the crunch of tires of gravel. A clapped-out Mercedes is bumping up the pot-holed coastal road. It pulls over in the scrub-land and tow scraggily bearded young men hop out in the parched countryside. The men - boys really- are dressed from head to toe in deep-green camouflage suits and look quite incongruous in the smoky-yellow countryside. Hurriedly, they each slip a gun out of a zip-up green bag and then stomp purposely into the parched scrubland. Within minutes, the late afternoon air is reverberating with the sound of shotgun fire. Despite a supposed afternoon curfew on hunters, the annual mass slaughter of migrating birds continues unabated.

In the heat-lashed early days of autumn, dusty Malta hardly seems like the Garden of Eden, but it is a welcome enough sight for tired and thirsty hundreds of thousands of tired birds migrating between their European summer breeding grounds and the warm winters of Africa. In total, over 170 different species of birds see the tiny Maltese islands as a perfect stop for a bit of rest and recuperation but many of them are given a rude welcome by the estimated 15,000 Maltese hunters waiting for the perfect shot.

No-one knows exactly how many birds are shot or trapped in Malta each year, but estimates range from half a million to up to a whopping 6 million. This figure is all the more remarkable when you consider the country is so small that you could probably walk from one end to the other in a day and a good pair of shoes. Yet Malta lies on a major migratory route and on their way north in spring and south in autumn. The Conservation organisation Birdlife International has shown that birds from 38 different countries have been shot or trapped across the Maltese islands. It seems an undignified end to a long journey.

The hunters aren't known to be overparticular about their targets. Hunters have shot at kingfishers, birds of prey and Natalino Fenech who has written a book on the slaughter, has even estimated that hunters' annual toll includes 11,500 owls. Grahame Madge of the conservation group Royal Society for the Protection of Birds puts it bluntly: "They will literally shoot anything that casts a shadow over Malta."

Tolga Temuge is the director of a conservation group called Birdlife Malta that has been trying to put a brake on the killing for years.

He says his group doesn't want to see the hunting banned altogether, but he does want to see the sport subjected to much tighter controls. At the moment it seems to be a free-for-all, with dozens of protected species falling victim to the hunter's guns. "Mostly they are targeting birds of prey," he says. "They shoot harriers, honey-buzzards, falcons and other such species. Most of them are hunted to be stuffed by a taxidermist and displayed at the homes of the hunters." Birdlife report that when five hundred honey buzzards arrived in Malta this spring, they were systematically hunted down and shot, with a 100 being shot in the course of an hour.

The scale of this illegal practice was highlighted by 3 police raids on taxidermists last year. One had 2,000 frozen and stuffed birds, 90 per cent of them protected species; the next had 79 birds, virtually all of them protected; while the other had 400 birds, also mostly protected. Conservationists suspect that the raided shops present just the tip of the ice-berg.

But Tolga told me that his first concern is to get spring-hunting banned. With every bird you kill during that season, he says, you are basically killing two or three, since you prevent them from breeding.

Indeed, Malta is the only country in the EU that allows hunting of birds in spring, under a special but limited exemption from EU Birds Directive. However it seems that Brussels is running out of patience with the trigger-happy hunters and the European Commission has begun infringement proceedings against Malta. So why doesn't Malta fall in to line with the rest of Europe?

Well, the hunters make up just over 3% of the population, but seem to have a lot of power. Tolga explained to me that they form a powerful and united lobby in a country where swing-groups can easily decide tight elections.

They are also prepared to defend their hobby with furious passion. In a hunting discussion, a hunter famously landed a punch the environment secretary. Meanwhile, Tolga accuses them of dumping oil in a wetland nature reserve and vandalising trees on Birdlife sanctuary. No arrests have been made over the vandalism.

But Tolga Temuge of Birdlife Malta says the tide is turning. Concerned members of the public and tourists have been handing dead and injured birds to Birdlife Malta, or e-mailing pictures of the slaughter. That public pressure, combined with the legal threats from Brussels is encouraging the government to finally tackle the hunters.

This May the controversial spring hunting season was closed early when protected honey buzzards were killed - a 100 were shot in the course of an hour or so - and, just this week 3 p.m. curfew was put on September hunting.

Illegal hunting is more tricky to deal with. BirdLife has set up a camp aimed at deterring potential law-breakers by a round-the-clock presence of the teams in the main hunting hotspots - in co-operation with the police. Tolga says this is now proving quite successful:

"The hunters who know that the bird watchers are around the area are very reluctant to shoot at protected species because we have cameras and we are in touch with the police." He urges European politicians to help with funding and urges the European public to come and join these migration camps, to help them keep an eye on the hunters. Then soon, maybe, the birds can get that welcome rest they came for.


(Published: 10.05.2008.)

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