The Committee Against Bird Slaughter (CABS) has announced it will be sending 24 'Bird Guards' to Malta next month to monitor illegal hunting hot-spots and to record bird migration data.

CABS press officer Axel Hirschfeld said the 24 CABS activists will be conducting operations day and night between September 13 and 28. Their mission will be to record numbers of migrating birds and to report breaches of hunting regulations to the police.

“In this respect, CABS welcomes the Maltese government's decision to ban hunting after 3 p.m. in the period between September 15 and 30, Heinz Schwarze, President of CABS, said.

He said that the CABS conservationists reckoned that their presence on the ground in large numbers, equipped with video cameras and high quality optics, would further reduce the mortality rate of protected species such as Honey Buzzards, harriers and falcons.

“The CABS team members will be clearly distinguishable from 'normal' tourists by their jackets and T-shirts with 'CABS Bird Guard' printed in bold yellow letters on the back. In addition to their monitoring and recording operations by day, additional patrols will be mounted at night to locate illegal Quail and Turtle Dove electronic decoy devices,” CABS said.

Last year more than 300 such devices, including cables, car batteries, timers and loudspeakers were located and reported to the Maltese police. The operation will be organised and conducted in close cooperation with the Maltese branch of International Animal Rescue (Hamrun) and financed exclusively by donations from German foundations and individuals. The participants will come from Germany, Hawaii , Italy, Poland and the UK.

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