“We believe that the lack of discipline by hunters along with a government that is bending over backwards and sideways to give in to the hunting lobby’s demands for weaker laws, weaker enforcement, and more derogations from the European Birds Directive are the main causes,” BirdLife said.

“The European Commission (EC) has listed this issue as a concern and initiated legal action against Malta in this regard, as well as in regard to the scam ‘scientific research’ derogation on finch trapping which has landed Malta again at the European Court of Justice (ECJ),” it explained.

“This amount is only a small fraction of what really happens in Malta and Gozo since it only represents the injured or dead birds found by the general public and passed on to BirdLife Malta and the police,” BirdLife Malta said. 

It also explained how thousands of other protected birds were illegally shot down and collected by the culprits, mainly for taxidermy purposes.

“These figures confirm an upward trend when one compares the past four years to the previous four. During the past eight years (2014-2021), in fact, a total of 794 illegally shot protected birds were found by the general public, with 76% of these being in the last four years,” it explained. 

From 2014 to 2017, Malta had 190 birds diagnosed as illegally shot while in the past four years, from 2018 to 2021, this triples to the amount to 604.

BirdLife Malta will also be presenting these latest figures, along with photographic and video evidence, to the European Commission in the near future.

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