Hunting enforcement has been drastically increased, according to Animal Rights Parliamentary Secretary Clint Camilleri, but conservationists say this is “just statistics”.

A spokesman for Mr Camilleri told the Times of Malta that the government had implemented major reforms to combat illegal hunting.

“Enforcement during migration seasons was doubled, intensity of field inspections and spot checks increased more than five-fold, and penalties for the illegal killing of highly protected birds were increased 10-fold,” the spokesman said.

BirdLife Malta head Mark Sultana, however, said that while these measures had been implemented, they were not proving to be successful.

“Looking at the results of this year, one can conclude that these statistics of enforcement deployment are not working. These are just statistical numbers and have no weight in proving the effectiveness or otherwise of enforcement,” he said.

Mr Sultana was quick to add that enforcement officers were not motivated.

Fear is fading year after year as hunters realise that illegal acts cannot be caught

The units are not experienced or trained, and according to the conservationist, a dedicated wildlife crime unit needs to be set up with a bite to match its bark.

“The reason this is so important is that illegal hunting stops from fear of being caught. This fear is fading away year after year as more hunters realise that illegal acts cannot be caught due to the lack of effective enforcement,” Mr Sultana said.

This was not the only issue Mr Camilleri and Mr Sultana did not agree on. The parliamentary secretary, himself a hunter, said the number of illegally shot birds reported this year was substantially lower than the numbers some years ago, “when literally hundreds of protected birds were routinely gunned down”.

Mr Sultana was quick to add some perspective: “While we can and should” admit that illegal hunting has decreased a lot from say, 10 years ago, an upward trend actually started in more recent years.

He said 17 cases had been recorded so far this year, two more than for the entire 2016 season. Mr Camilleri’s spokesman put the number of illegally shot birds at 15. He told the Times of Malta that while many hunters are law-abiding, the irresponsible actions of criminals are condemned in principle without reservation.

Again, Mr Sultana had a few words of his own. He said the term ‘many’ was subjective, as the spread of illegal hunting incidents showed it occurred across the entire island “with the slightest opportunity”.

“If the illegal hunters are few, then it should be easy to pick one out. To the contrary, a hunter that feels he can get away with shooting a protected bird is likely to do so,” he said.