Following a very impertinent letter (February 24) by David Conlin from the German Committee Against Bird Slaughter (CABS), suggesting four steps to solving illegal hunting in Malta, I would like to direct his attention to a website related to the persecution of protected birds in Germany, http://raptorpolitics.org.uk/?p=3717 . Hopefully he might decide to do the job for the Germans before stating he “comes twice a year to do the job of the Maltese”.
This website states: “About 50 buzzards were found dead in the German state of Baden-Württemberg in January 2011. At least 33 had been poisoned with the pesticide Carbofuran and the anaesthetic Penthobarbital. 28 birds were found between January 11 and 13. Five were found on January, 26 and another 20 buzzards were found some days later.”
According to what can be considered as an understatement, the chairman of the German NABU ornithological society Andre Baumann states: “It’s the worst case of raptor poisoning recorded in the last decades in Germany. The real number of poisoned raptors is unknown as not all birds will be found.”
Considering the size of Germany, such statistics are indeed worrying. All these birds were discovered within a month in just one state and as stated the real number of poisoned raptors is unknown. Yet Mr Conlin and his German bird slaughter group choose to tackle the problem in Malta, accusing Malta’s government of being “lethargic, “kowtowing to a small minority group” and ridiculing our law enforcement officers saying they are “playing Keystone Cops”.
Knowing the extent of bird “slaughter” in Germany, as can be evidenced above and on their own website www.komitee.de/en/projects/germany/germany-archive/raptors, CABS have the cheek to air a documentary on German television, airing a few illegalities in Malta in order to incite the German anti-hunting public to donate funds. Yet he categorically denies his trips to Malta are “unpaid holidays” when clearly the problem is far worse closer to home.
He states that he will persist in coming to Malta “to protect the lives of birds that breed in our gardens” and sends a very loud and clear message at the end of all his nonsense: “Our breeding birds migrate via your country, please send them back alive”.
He can rest assured the Maltese government and its police can do that without his interference, only to read more distressing news that what they have saved, lies dead on German soil while he and his colleagues enjoy the Maltese sunshine and insult the government and the police in the process.
Indeed, bird crime is a problem worldwide, and any government, no less the Maltese one, sees to the proper enforcement of its laws to the best of its abilities. What is totally unacceptable is for people of the likes of CABS to act as mercenaries expecting they can dictate to whoever they please. Purporting to be the world’s saviours of wildlife, they play on the gullible public’s sentiments to fund their theatrics when in actual fact what they accuse others of doing is happening on a far larger scale in their own back yard.