The man who has been apprehended for shooting a spoonbill is not a member of the hunter’s federation.

An African spoonbill was shot dead on Monday after it escaped from a private bird sanctuary.

The bird was show as it flew beyond the sanctuary in Burmarrad.

The FKNK said in a statement that the spoonbill, in the wild, was a scarce and very irregular passage migrant to the Maltese islands.

However the species had an extremely large range throughout most of Europe, with a very large population size, and the population was not believed to be decreasing.

For these reasons the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) evaluated the species as of least concern.

The FKNK said that, notwithstanding this, it strongly condemned any criminal act that anyone might commit when taking a single specimen of this protected species from the wild by any means, let alone “cowardly and madly” shoot an escapee that would have been captive bred with devoted and dedicated passion, at no small expense.

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