Birdlife today welcomed the Government's commitment to stamp out illegal hunting, but said it would take more than strong words and brute manpower to effectively tackle serious abuse.
The organisation said that in spite of the claimed increased enforcement, protected birds were still killed in large numbers throughout the and the tactics employed by enforcement officers were not effective enough in detecting such crimes and gathering evidence to bring their perpetrators to justice.
Of the 95 officers "deployed" to police the hunting season between September 15 and October 7, only 21 were recorded patrolling the countryside on any one shift. In Gozo, no ALE or AFM patrols were operated and CABS reported seeing the police only when they were responding to incidents they reported.
In Malta, the enforcement officers were uniformed and highly visible, patrolling in ALE or AFM Landrovers.
"What is needed is a new, smart approach to catching those hunters who continue to illegally shoot at protected birds. That requires specialist training, equipment and personnel dedicated to detecting and stopping wildlife crime, like the wildlife crime units of other European countries. It's not enough to just throw numbers at the problem or to leave it up to NGOs to detect and report crimes for the police to respond to,” conservation manager Nicholas Barbara said.
He said that a significant proportion of the 40 "disclosed offences" reported by Government resulted from reports made by BirdLife Malta and CABS teams rather than from direct detection by enforcement officers.
And although the government reported the "disclosure" of only one incident of shooting at a protected bird between September 15 and October 7, In BirdLife and CABS teams collectively witnessed 111 protected birds being shot at or shot down during the same period.
"Several of these incidents were filmed, including the shooting down of a Black Stork in Buskett despite the presence of police and BirdLife Malta volunteers who had worked together to guard the bird overnight," Mr Barbara said.
He noted that other incidents reported to the police but did not result in the "disclosure of offences". These included the shooting down of two honey buzzards in Bidni, limits of Marsascala, at around 4pm on September 16.