The police officers acting as witnesses in the court case against the consultant to the Animal Rights Parliamentary Secretary were among the first transferred from the environmental unit.
Albert Pace was convicted for the illegal use of bird callers on November 11, 2009. He was appointed adviser to Animal Rights Parliamentary Secretary Roderick Galdes soon after the Labour Party came to power following the general elections in March 2013.
Four months after the election, one of the most experienced police officers the environmental enforcement unit (ALE) had was transferred.
The same police officer was one of the main witnesses in the case that found Mr Pace guilty. The ALE officer had at least 14 years of experience in the unit.
One of the main tasks of the ALE is to monitor illegal hunting and trapping. The management of hunting and trapping activities in Malta is the responsibility of the animal rights parliamentary secretariat where Mr Pace is a consultant.
The transfers of the other two witnesses in the case that led to Mr Pace’s conviction were also among the first transferred from the unit, although some months later.
The Secretariat said that it had “never interfered and will absolutely never interfere in the work of the police force.”
By the end of the year, at least 20 of the 26 members of the police’s environmental enforcement unit were transferred, stripping the unit of decades of experience, according to information tabled in Parliament.
The move was considered a decapitation of the unit as wildlife crime requires specific training and experience in the field to be effective.
The Sunday Times of Malta reported last month that one of the first tasks Mr Pace, a former Labour MP and a licensed trapper and hunter, took on when he was appointed consultant was to advise the government on the revision of the law under which he was convicted four years earlier.
The changes included the decriminalisation of the use of electronic bird callers for hunting and trapping. After the revised rules came into force last year, those caught using the illegal electronic callers useful in luring wild birds would no longer have to face court.
Before the law was revised, anyone caught using illegal electronic bird callers for the first time faced a fine of €233 up to €2,329. For a second offence or more, those caught faced a fine of €466 up to €4,659 and/or imprisonment for up to two years. The equipment was confiscated and the culprit also faced the possible suspension of license for up to three years.
Following the revision of regulations, the maximum fine the culprit would face is €250 and the confiscation of equipment – this was the sentence Mr Pace received in 2009.
This is now the penalty no matter how many times the same individual is caught using illegal bird callers and there is no risk the license would be lost.
Crucially, the culprit does not face court and so has no record of his offence. Therefore, if the same individual is charged with another hunting or trapping offence the previous offences related to bird callers are not registered. This means the crime would be considered as a first offence. The result was a proliferation of this equipment in the countryside. The Committee Against Bird Slaughter earlier this month criticised the widespread use of “hundreds” of forbidden bird callers for the trapping of Golden Plovers.
Since Labour returned to power, spring hunting regulations have been relaxed and trapping reintroduced despite both being illegal under the Birds Directive.
In a “historical” decision last Friday, the Constitutional Court gave the green light for a referendum on spring hunting to be held this year after a coalition made up of environmental organisations and the green party collected enough signatures to place the decision in the hands of Maltese voters.