Secret killing fields
THANKS TO RECENT PRESS COVERAGE, WE’RE ALL AWARE OF THE UNLAWFUL SLAUGHTER OF BIRDS IN MALTA AND CYPRUS, BUT ILLEGAL HUNTERS IN CROATIA AND SERBIA ARE GETTING AWAY WITH MURDER TOO, WRITES NICK ACHESON.
Illegal hunters in Croatia and Serbia are getting away with murder
Milan Ružic stands in the dark, hours before dawn, listening to a quail. Quail often belt out their threenote song at night, but this is too loud, it’s coming from a harvested field and it’s August, when they shouldn’t be singing.
The song, Milan knows in his weary heart, comes from an illegal tape lure, placed to attract hundreds of migrant quail to the field where at first light they will be shot. This time, however, they’ll be lucky. Milan walks to the tape lure, switches it off and carries the evidence of illegal hunting to the back of his truck where it joins two other lures he has disabled that night.
Then his heart sinks again – at the thought of the blank looks and shrugged shoulders he will face when he presents his haul to the local police. “What are we supposed to do?” they will ask, as they always do.
CARRY ON CAMPAIGNING
Despite his weariness, Milan – who work ks for BirdLife Serbia – will carry on dismantling illegal lures, lobb bying politicians s and civil servants and marsh halling a team of volunteers s, and he will car rry on broadcast ing about Serb bia’s illegal bird d massacres s. He has he eld too many lifeless quail in his hands and picked up too many turtle doves, bloodied but still weakly flapping, to give up now. “Up to 170,000 birds are killed illegally in Serbia each year,” Milan says. “The majority, 550–60,000, are common quail. Many are shot during thee open season, but the use of eleectronic lures makes it illegal.” Though these birds diee in Serbia, they are vicctims of a regional racketr which embbraces huntinng tourism and tthe smugggling of birds to high-h end restauurants, mostly in Italy. “In 2001, Italian police on the Slovenian border stopped a truck with 120,702 wild birds, most of them killed in Serbia,” Milan says. “It was the worst case [of illegal killing] ever reported in Europe.”
QUAIL CONSUMPTION
In Croatia, to the west, the number of birds killed illegally is higher still. According to a report prepared by BirdLife International, half a million wild birds die illegally in the country each year. As in Serbia, thousands of them are quail, but here common coots are consumed in local restaurants, especially around the Neretva Delta that lies between Dubrovnik and Split.
“Though some coots are shot legally,” says Vedran Lucic of
BirdLife Croatia, “far more are taken than is permitted, and illegal practices, such as the use of lures, decoys and semiautomatic weapons, are rife.”
In both countries hunters know that their activities are illegal, but the problem goes beyond hunting into politics. “In Serbia, many politicians, policemen and judges are hunters,” says Milan. “The hunting lobby is very strong.”
“Croatian hunting laws are fine,” adds Vedran, “but they are not implemented, and poachers are not prosecuted. NGOs, ornithologists and bird-lovers report cases of illegal hunting, but without the cooperation of police and local ministries, our efforts only produce more data.”
DELTA FORCE
Hunters may be powerful, but the resolve of bird conservationists in the Balkans is strong, too, and they claim the tide of opinion is turning. “Our Serbian Bird Crime Task Force is gaining momentum,” says Milan, “with ever more support from the public.”
Vedran explains how they destroy illegal hunting hides on bird reserves in the Neretva Delta. “We recycle the materials as birdfeeders and nestboxes at workshops with local children. Their response is great. In this way we feel a step closer to a future with no poaching.”
IN 2001, ITALIAN POLICE STOPPED A TRUCK WITH 120,702 BIRDS, MOST OF THEM KILLED ILLEGALLY IN SERBIA.”