Call for law changes to facilitate fight against illegal hunting

Officers from the administrative law enforcement unit on Thursday night seized at least six bird callers and disconnected two others they were unable to extract as these were buried deep into the ground, police sources said.

The police carried out searches at night for illegal bird callers in the regions of Salina and Mgarr after receiving reports that hunters were activating such equipment at night to attract quails to particular fields, from where they are then shot the following morning.

The possession and use of electronic bird callers is illegal and the minimum fine for keeping or using one is Lm50. Some hunters are also using CD players.

The police prosecute hunters over the use of bird callers on a regular basis but some have been using them at night, often switching them on by remote control, hoping the police would not find the callers.

Two of the callers were located during the searches but they were buried in sealed concrete cases underground and only the wires connecting them to the batteries and loudspeakers were evident. These were cut off.

The sources said various aspects of the bird protection regulations had to be changed in order to enable the police to be more effective.

One of the most common problems was that hunters at sea carried a number of shotguns even if only one was licensed.

"It is not uncommon to find seacraft with three or four people on board and as many or more guns. However, all the guns would be licensed on behalf of one person and the other individuals would not have a hunting licence.

"The law should allow one gun per licensed hunter as it is obvious that hunters carry more than one gun not because they fear it goes out of action but so that others rest can hunt without paying the hunting licence," the sources said.

Police officers were often finding plastic bags to which stones were tied on speedboats used by hunters. These are used to hurriedly pack in them protected birds after being shot and then thrown at sea whenever police boats are sighted. In two recent cases, such bags were not weighted well enough and thus returned to the surface after taking in air. The police found a heron and a herring gull, both protected species, inside the bags.

The sources said that one of the biggest problems faced by officers when stopping hunters on land resulted from the fact that the latter usually did not carry with them either their ID card or the hunting licence. Thus, it would not be possible for the police to verify whether the hunters was licensed or not and neither their identity could be established.

"There were cases where we found hunters using stolen guns. One would only realise that the gun is stolen when checking the serial number at the police headquarters. A person using a stolen weapon is unlikely to give you his genuine particulars and the law should compel hunters to be in possession of both the licence and the ID card and not allow them to produce it within 24 hours. Hunters take a lot of things with them when hunting. They never forget their cartridges, so why should they forget their licence," the sources argued.