Despite plenty of gunshots heard at Delimara, in Gozo and elsewhere, it has at last gone quiet outside our urban windows at dawn as another bloody spring hunt has ended.

Since turtle dove migration was low this year, the sound of gunfire we were forced to endure may well have been merely indiscriminate target practice on anything that dared grace the skies over Malta.

The loudest sound now is that of hunters getting hot and bothered that the British Parliament might have an opinion on what hunters are doing to birds that would normally migrate as far as Britain and beyond.

The British and other European nationals even feel they have a right to see birds that do not migrate further north than the Mediterranean when they visit Malta on holiday, such as flamingos. This is always provided a gun-happy miscreant has not blasted them out of the salt pans.

Every year since 2010 the spring hunting season has been extended, restrictions relaxed, bag limits and the number of licences increased. Last year, things got so out of control the army had to be called in.

Malta may be ours but the birds belong to everyone

A week into this year’s spring hunting open season, Patrick Barkham wrote in The Guardian: “This is one of Europe’s more uneven contests. Birds flying over the islands of Malta on their annual migration to northern Europe must evade 31 licensed marksmen per square kilometre – 15 times more than in shooting-friendly France.”

In spring, female (left) and male Montagu’s harriers return to their central European breeding grounds from Africa, provided they survive the hail of lead from Maltese hunters. Photos: Ray Galea

For much of April, shotguns shattered our early mornings. Malta being the only European member state to shoot migrating birds in spring is possibly also the only place where one can be woken up by gunfire… from 5am right on the urban fringe. It’s not even necessary to move to the countryside for a ringside seat at the bi-annual massacre of winged creatures on these islands.

Valleys snaking down into the residential area of St Julian’s seemed, for all 19 days of the spring rifle fest, to be riddled with men intent on killing wild birds without much regard for their status on the protected list… or for the number of cartridges loaded above regulation.

Last year, and the year before, St Julian’s residents rejoiced at hearing and seeing colourful bee-eaters fly over buildings and town gardens. This year they came again, but the flock was cut down to nothing in as many days by a garrison of shooters on the loose stalking the valleys.

It’s no secret that this year’s spring hunt season, which ended on April 30, averaged one protected bird down on an almost daily basis before it went mercifully silent. That was the recorded figure; one can only guess how many ended up hidden under stones.

Foreign activists stopped “bullying” the hunters and flew north, back home. Now the scandal of springtime bird slaughter has rippled to the UK and the European Commission.

Close to 600 violations were documented by a visiting Committee Against Bird Slaughter (CABS) team working with 26 volunteers. Among these were the shooting of Montagu’s harriers, honey buzzards and falcons. CABS has a particular soft spot for the Montagu’s harrier after years of working on a conservation project to protect fledglings from early harvest of barley fields in the Rhineland, a favourite nesting site.

An entry in the CABS Mediterranean diary covering the two weeks they were in Malta details operations to combat the illegal shooting of migrant birds of prey and song birds and the location of illegal song bird trapping sites. Six sites were dismantled and over 30 protected birds set free while the widespread presence of the team, split into small groups, acted as a deterrent to poachers.

While they were kept busy in Malta, other CABS members were similarly engaged, working with the State Forest Police on the island of Ponza and the Anti-Poaching Squad in Cyprus. Teams were also on the ground to stop illegal trapping in Breschia and Ischia, with another group targeting illegal shooting of birds of prey as they crossed the Straits of Messina for summer feeding and breeding in Europe.

Naturalist and BBC reporter Chris Packham has been talking like a war correspondent fresh from the front and with good reason. In Malta he was detained by police for hours and shoved to the ground by gunmen for simply doing his job, reporting on the illegal killing of dozens of endangered European birds.

The sound of dissenting voices against the plunder of migratory species rang out in a debate on UK policy for protection of migratory birds in Malta held in the British Parliament last week. Amid cries of ‘colonialism’, the local hunting fraternity’s ire was raised over the House of Commons discussion.

Malta may be ours but the birds belong to everyone. The hunting minority cannot understand that it is at odds to receive EU money to protect nature but then complain when a member state talks about the deleterious impact Maltese shooters have on birds which might otherwise have reached its shores.

A proposal in the European Parliament to ban live decoys (used in France, Italy, Malta and Spain) for bird hunting was defeated last month . It was turned down after a bid from the European federation of hunting associations that live decoys could be valuable to monitor disease in wild birds – not much good when the bird is dead. The vote was a setback for wild bird conservation.

As a result of mounting pressure in Malta last month over the issue, MEP and British Green Liberal Democrats president Catherine Bearder has added her name to a letter requesting a meeting with the European Commissioner. So far, 33 MEPs from 10 countries are asking what can be done about Malta’s spring hunting debacle.

Can the European Commission do more to stop Malta breaking EU rules by failing to apply the derogation correctly? The move aims to ensure the abuses of the Birds Directive taking place in Malta are dealt with.

Spring hunting is destined to die one way or another; even hunters admit it. If the referendum to end hunting in spring doesn’t get them, dwindling numbers of turtle doves will. Britain’s population of turtle doves has declined by 95 per cent since 1970. Both hunters and conservationists concede that this decline is due to pesticides used in agriculture. Unfortunately a number of people in influential positions in the media are taken in by the hunters’ tactic of pouring scorn on these facts, and so become accomplices in spreading doubt.

Indiscriminate hunting of birds in Albania has led to empty skies followed by a two-year ban from this year on hunting of all birds and mammals. Eagles and brown bears became seriously endangered after decades of rampant hunting. Thousands of hunters travelled to Albania every year from Italy, attracted by lax restrictions. The Association of Albanian Hunters now blames the government for failing to implement adequate controls.

No one travels to Malta for the express purpose of annihilating wild birds; the local population of shooters, not in the least put out from being disowned by the hunters federation (FKNK), see to that. Bringing back the ban on spring hunting is the only plausible way to deal with it.

http://birdlifemalta.blogspot.com/2014/04/spring-watch-2014-little-egrets-pursued.html

http://www.komitee.de/en/projects/germany/save-montagu 039s-harrier