Hunting lobbies accuse BirdLife Malta of ‘flagrant lies’, ‘deceit’ ahead of ECJ case
The hunting lobby FKNK has accused BirdLife Malta of “flagrant lies” while another hunting group - Kaċċaturi San Ubertu – accused the NGO of “deceit” ahead of a European Court of Justice case against Malta’s application of a hunting derogation last autumn.
In a statement on Monday, BirdLife Malta said that the scientific research derogation – which is the subject of the ECJ case – was being used as a smokescreen for finch trapping.
BirdLife Malta said that during the last season, trappers only managed to report 30 birds with fitted rings from abroad, decimating an estimated minimum of 51,400 birds from the wild in the process.
“In their ultimate effort to impress the European Court of Justice (ECJ), which is set for a public hearing in Luxembourg this Thursday 7 March 2024 in Case C-23/23 European Commission v Malta, regarding Malta’s application of derogation from the EU “Birds” Directive, which permitted a scientific research programme about the migration of finches over the Maltese islands in the autumn of 2023, BirdLife Malta, barring any scruples and shamelessly, resorted to their old tactics of overestimations, fallacies and flagrant lies,” the FKNK said.
“For instance, they ‘assumed’ and ‘estimated’ that during the derogated period in question, the research participants livecaptured 51,400 finches (at one point they even blatantly said that the finches’ were killed!), which birds were not released back into the wild but illegally taken home by the research participants! These are the same BirdLife Malta that just a few years back used to ‘assume’ and ‘estimate’ that the same participants live-captured and took home over 3,000,000 finches,” the organisation added.
The FKNK said that it is fully confident in the ECJ’s wisdom and that the Court will not fall victim to “these excessively emotional and dramatic BirdLife Malta performances.”
Furthermore, the FKNK said that it openly challenges these
BirdLife Malta “fabrications.”
“Finally, it should be seriously noted that notwithstanding Maltese Governments several donations over the years, in the form of large rural open spaces, which, to add insult to injury are then fenced-in, and the hundreds of thousands of euro paid on an annual basis, to BirdLife Malta, these ungratefully persist in harming the Maltese nation reputation abroad,” the organisation said.
Kaċċaturi San Ubertu meanwhile said that it condemns hunting and trapping illegalities "no less than condemning blatant deceit spread by Birdlife Malta to reach their abolitionist aims."
"We ask Birdlife Malta to substantiate their allegation of 51,000 trapped birds and other fallacies this season if they value their credibility since we have no reserves saying it's all purposely fabricated," the hunting group said.
"We praise the stand taken by Alex Agius Saliba against such deceit which not only damages the trapping and hunting sector but also Malta's image internationally. We urge government to follow Mr. Agius Saliba's stand."
"Birdlife Malta's aim is to influence the European Courts of Justice days before it pronounces its verdict on trapping. A case built on similar fake news which inflates a few illegal instances to seem like an international disaster."
"We draw government's attention to safeguarding our hunting and trapping practices and Malta's image which is tarnished by unverified data compiled by extremists that without limits, want to ban hunting and trapping in our islands."
In a reaction, BirdLife Malta Head of Conservation Nicholas Barbara explained how BirdLife Malta has determined an estimate (which is a conservative one, at best) of 51,404 finches trapped during the 2023 smokescreen finch 'scientific research' season.
The workings are based on an average of just one finch landing on each trapping site per day, of which 65.5% were successfully trapped. From BirdLife Malta's observations during the 2023 trapping season, all finches were kept in captivity, instead of being released.
If we had to assume that trapping sites operated over just half of the 61-day season (assuming only 30 days were good for trapping) this works out to a conservative 19.65 finches caught during the season per trapping site. With a simple extrapolation to a nationwide scenario, and using the Wild Birds Regulation Unit's own data showing a total of 2,616 licensed trapping sites, the figure that we are left with is a staggering 51,404 finches.
The reality is possibly even worse than this estimate, because this estimate is based on the active WBRU-licensed trapping sites, whilst in our fieldwork we also came across non-registered illegal trapping sites, with this resulting in an even larger amount of clap nets, capturing more birds. Some of these sites became registered with WBRU and legal to operate only after we reported this to the police, BirdLife said.