Thousands of signatures are expected to be received by the Office of the Prime Minister after the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) launched a campaign against illegal hunting.
The RSPB is the BirdLife Partner in the UK and boasts of over one million members. The organisation is inviting its members to collect signatures and send them to the society by next Monday, so that these would then be sent to the Prime Minister in Malta.
The campaign material states that millions of migratory birds "are ruthlessly slaughtered on their way to their breeding grounds in Europe.
"The birds which arrive safely on our shores are the lucky ones, having avoided the hails of lead shot, becoming helplessly entangled in nets or stuck to glue-covered twigs.
"Malta is one of the very worst offenders. During spring and autumn, hunters blast birds out of the skies in incredible numbers," the RSPB said.
"We are giving every support we can to BirdLife Malta, the island's wild bird conservation body, so they can monitor the situation, pass evidence to law enforcement agencies, and teach future generations to cherish the island's wild birds.
"You can help us support the people striving to protect wild birds in southern Europe," the RSPB added, first asking for donations and then asking for support "by signing our petition".
The hunting issue has often drawn international attention and last June the Belgian Bird Protection Society, backed by the Swedish, German and Greek ornithological societies, made international pressure on the EU to lift the spring hunting derogation Malta has on hunting in spring. A petition signed by over 190,000 people was presented to the European Parliament.
Neither BirdLife Malta nor the RSPB had supported the Belgian society when the petition was launched, with BirdLife Malta making an appeal when the petition was about to be presented, arguing that the earlier text could have harmed tourism.
BirdLife Malta together with BirdLife International later lodged a formal complaint with the EU Commission on the inadequate transposition and implementation of the Birds Directive in Malta. This was another change of tack on BirdLife Malta's part as when the former EU Commissioner Margot Wallstrom was in Malta and had said EU legislation for the protection of wild birds should be respected from the date of accession, hunters organisations and BirdLife Malta had criticised her.
BirdLife Malta had argued she was underestimating the difficulties of the situation and was expecting radical changes overnight.
Nature Trust, on the other hand, had supported the EU Commissioner's statements and said: "Hunting and trapping have severely reduced our breeding bird population and take a heavy toll on migrants, using the sorry excuse of tradition to conceal these crimes against nature".
A Birdlife spokesman had later argued that "the circumstances when Ms Wallstrom was in Malta were different".
Following the Belgian group's petition, the European Parliament's Petitions Committee recommended that the derogation allowing bird hunting in spring will not be renewed for next year and that trapping should be completely abolished after 2008.
The European Commission later announced it was initiating legal action against Malta on spring hunting after the College of Commissioners found Malta in breach of the Birds Directive.