Spring operations in Southern Italy come to a successful conclusion (1 Viewer)

[A CHAPLIN]

Hi Folks,

I have just received the following email showing what was achieved by the Bird Protection Camp in Italy in the Spring. Anyone wanting to help as a volunteer at a similar camp in Malta in September can find details on BirdLife Malta's site and also on BirdForum. If anyone has not made holiday plans yet and would like a holiday helping the birds please think of Malta.

I would like to add my personal thanks to the members of the team who participated in the Italian camp with considerable success.

Ann :t:

Dear bird and nature lovers and Committee supporters

We have good news from Southern Italy where our spring bird protection operations were the most successful yet.
Even the most optimistic of us would never have believed that matters could turn out like this: There were no Whinchat traps set in the terraced gardens on Ischia, no shots were fired at migrating Turtle Doves from the cliffs of the Island of Procida and no nets blocked the passage of the Wheatear in the Ponza macchia. Perhaps a little bit overstated, but almost the case.
Some 100 Italian volunteers took part in the 3 bird protection camps run by our Italian partner organisations LAC, WWF and LIPU in Lazio and Campania. The operations covered the complete time window of the passage of the late migrant song birds, a period of six weeks from mid-April to the end of May. The operations on all three islands were conducted in close cooperation with the forest and regional police. The results:

- 183 fall traps, 1 bow trap, 2 nets and 4 electronic decoy devices (not a single one on Ischia!) located and removed
- Only 9 poachers caught red-handed
- Five shotguns, 360 rounds of ammunition and two wire snares for wild boar confiscated

Whereas the hunters eagerly awaited the start of the illegal spring hunting season and were occasionally to be seen, by the end peace and quiet reigned.

The times in which on Ischia alone, 2,500 traps and 34 decoy devices were found and removed during a single week, and a minimum of 500 shots could be heard every morning, are apparently a thing of the past. Our work on the islands since 1993, at times arduous and sometimes dangerous, appears to have paid off.

Detailed information on the operations (at present only in German) can be found, as usual, at www.komitee.de.

Best regards,

Alexander Heyd
from Komitee gegen den Vogelmord

(Most of the CABS website will be available in English later this year)

www.komitee.de
www.artenschutzbrief.de

Translated and published on behalf of CABS by

David Conlin
Proact International www.proact-campaigns.net/team

 

[rosbifs]

Sounds like a success story!! Hope things go similarly well in Malta, good luck....

It will be harder but worhtwhile. Out of interest, and excuse if mentioned in earlier threads, what are the rules for hunting in Malta? Presumably there are periods when hunting is allowed? The point I'm to ascertain is why the project in Italy was successful - is it because it focussed on illegal hunting and was therefore more black and white....

 

[A CHAPLIN]

Hi,

Now that Malta has joined the EU it must obey the laws, in this case the Bird Directive which it does not, they insist that hunting is a long held tradition and will carry on regardless. Interestingly I have just read an article in the Times Malta stating that hunting has only been a tradition since the end of World War 2 i.e. 1945 before that people only hunted for food now they blast everything that flies out of the sky.

The Federation of Hunters in Malta set their own rules.

The operation in Italy was successful because most of them obey the EU Bird Directive which specifically bans hunting in Spring when birds are on migration to their breeding grounds. They and other Mediterranean countries which also killed birds all year round changed their ways on joining the E U, also after some persuasion. It is now up to Malta to do the same. Infringement proceedings have already been started for the last 4 years but sadly the law moves slowly.

Ann