Five Maltese men have been detained in Sicily after trying to smuggle nearly 100 protected finches into Malta in tiny boxes.
The men were intercepted between Modica and Ragusa in Sicily on Friday where they were also found to be in possession of five goldfinches and five serins which they used to lure the 100 birds, according to Italian media reports.
The hunters also had the necessary equipment to capture 500 birds, had they not been caught.
It is believed that the birds were intended to be smuggled to Malta by catamaran, where they would have been sold on the black market. Once found, the birds were released by the Italian authorities.
According to the reports, many of the finches were packed into tiny boxes and mistreated to such an extent that they would not have survived the voyage, with one of the birds even found to have had its wings broken.
The smuggling of finches yields thousands of euros in income to suppliers
The hunters, whose identity is not yet known, squashed the birds into such restricted spaces to prevent them from chirping and alerting customs officials before boarding the ferry.
The smuggling of finches yields thousands of euros in income to suppliers, spurred on by the government’s decision to reintroduce finch trapping after it had been phased out in 2008. A finch can easily fetch €100 to €250 in Malta, when it is bought for close to nothing in Sicily.
The demand arises because live decoys are needed on trapping sites to lure birds in the wild with their song. That enables the trappers to capture a flock that lands on the net following the bird’s call.
Last November, over a thousand finches were released into the wild after being found packed into vegetable crates in a car attempting to board the ferry to Malta in Pozzallo.
Earlier in the year, over 1,300 songbirds were discovered in different smuggling operations over three weeks.
The Maltese government reintroduced finch trapping despite warnings from the European Commission. The Commission has since referred Malta to the European Court of Justice over the matter.
Italy received similar warnings from the Commission, but banned all forms of bird trapping last year.