Birdlife has released a video documenting this year’s trapping season.

The organisation said in a statement its staff detected 41 illegalities in 10 days of monitoring – a small fraction of the true scale of illegal trapping occurring in Malta and Gozo on a daily basis.

The 2018 trapping season opened on October 20 and is open until December 31.

The current derogation allows for the trapping of song thrush and golden plover. The trapping of finches was ruled illegal earlier in the year following a ruling by the European Court of Justice.

During 10 days of fieldwork in November, 41 illegalities were found at 31 trapping sites. They included electronic callers, nets and/or poles left unattended, nets of an unauthorised mesh size, and lapwing and finch trapping.

Eleven of the sites were also unregistered. Forty live finches were seized from three finch trapping sites in Gozo in one day alone.

All were either confiscated by the police to be passed on to Wild Birds Regulation Unit, or released back into the wild on site. Seventeen of these incidents were passed to the police for further investigations.

Birdlife said the footage represented only a small fraction of the true scale of illegal trapping occurring in Malta and Gozo on a daily basis during the trapping season, and showed how difficult it was to enforce effectively.

This was because many of the trapping sites were in areas that were either difficult to see and/or access, raising the question of effective monitoring.

Birdlife said that given the lack of adequate and sufficient enforcement, which led to trappers disobeying the laws set out in the trapping derogation, the trapping season should not have been opened.

Around 1,500 trappers registered for the season in 2018, and there were not enough police or WBRU officers available to ensure that the law was being upheld.

This was why Birdlife believed that a Wildlife Crime Unit within the Malta Police Force needed to be established, it said.