[David]

Press Release by the Komitee gegen den Vogelmord (Committee against Bird Slaughter) Germany

Committee Website

3. December 2004



A gruesome find: Customs officers discover suitcases full of song bird corpses in Munich – over 2,000 Meadow Pipits confiscated.

Munich. In the course of a routine inspection of luggage with an x-ray machine at Munich Airport Customs officers found 4 suitcases stuffed to the brim with highly protected song birds. In the luggage of a 40 year old Italian, en route to North Italy from Romania, the officers discovered 2,101 dead Meadow Pipits, neatly laid out and packed in plastic bags. The Committee against Bird Slaughter has received information to the effect that the birds were intended for sale to gourmets in a Venetian restaurant. Despite strict laws and regulations, "Polenta ucelli" (Polenta with song bird) or "Spiedo ucelli" (song bird on a spit) are still considered delicacies which can be bought ‘under the counter’ at high prices.

According to the spokesperson of the Committee Axel Hirschfeld “the illegal sale of song birds in Italy is still a million Euro business”. Bird protection societies estimate that in North Italy alone 2 million thrushes, robins, finches and other song birds are eaten. The poaching and smuggling of these birds is professionally organised. “Not long ago an attempt was made to smuggle dead song birds in coffins from Romania” Hirschfeld says.

The Committee also stated that hundreds of thousands of migrating birds are shot or trapped on their roosts every year in Romania for the benefit of Italian gourmets. Meadow pipits belong to the family of pipits and wagtails Motacillidae and are on the Red List in Germany. Population figures have sunk drastically in the last few years; according to the Committee only 90,000 pairs still breed in Germany.

Further information, or pictures of plucked song birds, can be obtained from the Committee:

Telefon:+49 228-66 55 21 or Telefax: + 49 228-66 52 80

Alexander Heyd, Auf dem Dransdorfer Berg 98, 53121 Bonn

Translation and worldwide distribution David Conlin 2004

[Kevin Mac]

Ouch. The same goes for so many other animal species: bear gall bladders, cobra (and other snake) blood, endangered fish stocks including abalone. The more money involved the worse the poaching. What's the solution? Maybe death by plucking........

[David]

From Menotti Passarelle, Proact Team member in Italy

A full coverage of this new on the german media is to be found on This Blog:

So you will be able to check out, at the right section, a collection of link on the topic; I suggest you to visit the group of links called "Romania, the last frontier".

Thanks David for the translation.

Do you know of any website reporting the new in english ?
Sorry, Italian medias normally don't report these news
:-( Cheers Menotti Passarella
info@birdingitaly.com
www.birdingitaly.net

Can anyone help with Menotti's query?


*TIA*

David

[David]

Even without imports from the Balkans, the trade in shot songbirds within Italy is huge. Hunters using call-birds (usually skylarks, fieldfares and redwings) as well as illegal (to use in hunting) electronic bird calls (such as those shown here:

http://www.vocalist.it/riproduttore.html

kill huge numbers of birds from hides in much of Italy every autumn.

The hide-based hunters are ALLOWED to kill 25 birds a day each, five days a week in the months of October, November and early December- about 50 days hunting overall - a theoretical maximum of 1250 birds per hunter, but some were boasting of having killed 250 skylarks in the first week of October 2004 (a good year for larks and fieldfares). On a 'bad' day in early October in open areas of the plain of Friuli you can stand in one spot and hear 100 -200 shots per hour from 6 or 7 hides from before dawn 'til passage tails off around 10am In the regions Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Veneto I would estimate c.5000 hide hunters killing perhaps 250 birds each over the season - a total of 1,250,000 for the Triveneto area alone. To this you have to add the birds killed with the 'caccia vagante' (wandering hunting) where hunters out after woodcock can take potshots at larks, blackbirds and thrushes (and illegally at pipits, buntings or whatever) 5 days a week.

I think the estimate of 2,000,000 songbirds legally killed is good for the Veneto alone without taking into account other hotspots for the practice such as the provinces of Pavia and Brescia in the region of Lombardia. The wave of thrush and lark killing spreads south with the migration to cover the whole of the peninsula. The Triveneto contains c.
10% of the Italian population. While shooting small passerines is a peculiarly Venetian pastime I would be amazed if the total of passerines shot by Italy's 800,000 licenced hunters in any year were less than 10,000,000.

Apart from the trafficker picked up at Munich airport and those caught in Operation 'Balkan Birds' and 'Operation Colibri', evidence is cropping up of a systematic trade in these birds that amounts to millions of Euros a year in Italian-shot birds to supply the Christmas restaurant trade, with groups of hunters hunting all day every day they are allowed to.

The attempt to enter Italy via an EU aiport is interesting, suggesting the traffickers may be feeling the heat.. A return by road from Romania to Italy involves at least 3 border crossings (Romania-Hungary, Hungary-Slovenia and Slovenia-Italy) and Italian hunters with illegal bags having been intercepted at all 3 borders this autumn as well as at the Serbian-Croatian and Croatian-Slovene ones.The sums of money involved are not small. Figures of €40 paid for a dead woodcock or a dozen skylarks are bandied about. The same birds prepared for the table would cost €100 or more in a good restaurant in Treviso. One restaurant near Udine is reported as (illegally) selling Woodcock caught in Belarus using powerful hand-held spotlights and landing nets. They're advertised by the proprietor as 'containing no lead shot'. Our 'friend's' meadow pipits ('lis vuitis' in Friulano, and rather less sought after than
skylarks) would have been worth about €5000. There is some suggestion that 'invitations' to hunt at good sites for lark passage are in fact sold. This type of hunting, together with the high-intensity duck hunting carried out in the Venetian and Tuscan wetlands, probably does more damage to Europe's birdlife than any other hunting practised anywhere in Europe.

Thanks PT,

David