In his letter of January 30, Andrè Raine, BirdLife Malta Conservation manager, took us to task for highlighting BirdLife's mix-up when they quoted different figures of killed protected birds in two separate reports for the years 2007 to 2009.
Dr Raine brushed off our statement by saying that "...the only discrepancy consists of three birds due to a typo on one website, which was corrected".
The so-called correction was made no doubt through a mark-up.
We stand by what we had stated, and we have screen shots to prove it. "In their news release of January 5, 2010, they stated that in the years 2007 to 2009 the organisation received 285 shot protected birds, and in their report on 'illegal hunting' they state that in those years a total of 267 shot protected birds were brought in to BirdLife Malta."
Simple arithmetic says that 285 minus 267 equals 18, and not 3, six times less.
BirdLife's fiddling with figures and their present campaign which is also potentially damaging to Malta's incoming tourism are nothing new.
Dr Raine should note that, well before his time in Malta, BirdLife's figures of shot birds over Malta were always questionable, and incoming tourism boycotts formed part of their plans.
Natalino Fenech based his book of 1992 on assumptions: his up-to-100,000 cuckoos, bee-eaters and hoopoes shot annually over Malta contrasted with the figure of 8,000 calculated by BirdLife co-founder Joe Sultana. Dr Fenech's estimate of shearwaters shot was 10,000 against Mr Sultana's 2,000.
Raptors taken per annum were calculated by Dr Fenech at between 64,000 and 96,000, whereas Mr Sultana's figures stood at 2,700 to 5,000.
At that time Dr Fenech's book was used to hurt incoming tourism, a pillar of Malta's economy, when it was distributed to tour operators in the UK who were urged to read it before directing their client-tourists to Malta.
We are certain that today, to his credit and honesty, Dr Fenech would be the first person to admit that things have come a very long way since then, and that illegal killing of protected birds has been drastically reduced and is under control.
Dr Raine and his employers of BirdLife Malta should, therefore, stop their smear campaigns against the good name of Malta.