Updated 7.22pm 

Poachers tried to shoot down eagles on four separate occasions between yesterday and this morning, the Parliamentary Secretariat for Animal Rights has said. 

Police have apprehended one suspect, who remains in police custody. 

BirdLife Malta said that at least 10 of the 60 eagles who roosted in Malta overnight had been targeted by poachers, with reports of shootings in Dingli's Xagħra tal-Isqof area, the Santa Katarina valley and an eagle shot down near Fawwara. 

The organisation said that the suspect in police custody had been apprehended after a team of its volunteers caught the individual shooting down a Booted Eagle in Tal-Virtu'. Video footage has been passed on to police, the organisation said. 

Footage shot yesterday revealed attempts by poachers to shoot down an eagle at Buskett.

While escorting a short-toed eagle on its flight to the roost at Buskett gardens, volunteers of the Committee Against Bird Slaughter observed a group of poachers firing seven shots at the protected bird.

The incident happened yesterday at 5.20 pm when the bird flew low to land on a tree in the sanctuary, CABS said.

The police were called immediately but did not search the area, the organisation said.

"We have been informed that the police had no resources left as they were busy with responding to separate reports of eagles being killed in other areas of the island," CABS wildlife crime officer Fiona Burrows said.

Photo: Bernard Farrugia

But that claim was seemingly rebutted by the parliamentary secretariat, which in a statement said that authorities had conducted an "intensive surveillance operation... in a wide area". 

The NGO said it has received reports from local birdwatchers that the raptors have also been targeted by poachers in Fomm ir-Riħ and on the Ġebel Ciantar plateau south of Buskett.

In a statement, BirdLife Malta drew parallels between the fate of this flock of eagles and that of a similar 50-strong one that had crossed Malta in October 2013, which led to 15 avian casualties. 

On that occasion, the government had reacted by doubling poaching fines.

BirdLife Malta CEO Mark Sultana called the incidents "a sad embarrasment for law enforcement" and called on the Prime Minister to establish a well-equipped wildlife crime unit.

FKNK storm out of Ornis meeting

In a separate incident, representatives of hunters' lobby group FKNK marched out of an Ornis Committee meeting in protest at a vote calling for hunting to be banned from Qawra Point. 

Calling the decision "baseless and without justification", the FKNK said hunters and trappers were not consulted on this proposal. 

It said many areas prohibited to hunters had now been handed to "BirdLife and their allies" and were no longer open to the public, and mocked activists opposing hunting as being made up of "a few individuals, including foreigners... many who are still children." 

The FKNK statement accused Ornis chairman Mark Anthony Falzon of having raised the proposal at the meeting. 

But Prof. Falzon insisted that was simply not true.

"The issue was raised by a police inspector during a previous Ornis meeting. The meeting's minutes - which were approved by the FKNK itself - show this," he told Times of Malta. 

Prof. Falzon also clarified that it had been BirdLife Malta who had called for the issue to be put to a vote, and noted that as chairman, he could not block a vote proposed by a committee member.