Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1527558
12 NEWS maltatoday | SUNDAY • 6 OCTOBER 2024 MATTHEW VELLA mvella@mediatoday.com.mt Undeterred by EU's gavel, Maltese trappers MALTA'S hunting lobby said it will lobby the government to in- troduce foreign bird ringers in a bid to provide scientific data on finch populations migrating over the islands, in response to the EU court's ban on trapping birds. It is not the first time that the FKNK attempts to attract bird ringers to Malta. The endgame: ring as many finches trapped during the season, in a bid to build as much data as possible to convince the European Commis- sion that Malta has a special case to argue against the Birds Direc- tive's trapping ban. It is no easy feat. In the past years, the govern- ment has unsuccessfully attempt- ed to pay EURING ringers from overseas to accompany trappers in Malta to ring the birds they catch and release. Nobody from the international community of ringers is buying it. Many see this as a smokescreen for trappers, who use clap-nets now ruled illegal by the EU's Court, to catch more birds, and then flaunt the ringing data in the hope of derogating once again from the ban on trapping. In the three tenders issued so far by the government, all were eventually cancelled after no of- fers were received. While the FKNK claims only BirdLife Malta is licensed to ring birds in Malta – which it does using mist nets, as well as within the bird sanctuaries it manages – the laws actually allow hunters and trappers to become licensed bird ringers under the EURING accreditation network. But they don't (and the few that have do not flaunt their new hob- by with the rest of the fraternity). After all, the Labour administra- tion since 2014 has persistently derogated from the EU's ban on bird trapping. But twice the Eu- ropean Court of Justice ordered that these deviations from the law were illegal. And while the government will not be challenging the European Commission any time soon, its political alliance with the hunting lobby suggests that it will explore new options to audaciously open another trapping season – as soon as 2025, in the last chance saloon of a pre-electoral year. Scientific data from ringing The government's last ten- der for 10 bird ringers, costing €300,000, was fervently support- ed by the FKNK. But there were no takers. If bird trappers can be allowed to catch these birds using clap- nets – which are illegal in the Birds Directive – and then ringed, they hope the scientific data from the ringed birds can provide an elusive "reference population" of the finches migrating over the Maltese islands. The FKNK argues that its 4,000 trappers are 'better' at ringing birds than BirdLife's few dozen volunteers, because they catch more finches anyway. The claim stems from the sheer volume of birds caught by the otherwise illegal clap-nets: 16,000 trapped finches caught in 2016 and 2017, the only years for which official data is available. On the contrary, BirdLife has ringed just 2,683 individual finch- es over its 44 years of activity, which it does using mist nets. Crucially however, of these ringed birds only eight have his- torically been recaptured some- where else in Europe, such is the paucity of data on these reference populations for migratory birds. "It stands to reason that the more active these widespread research sites are, the more da- ta will be obtained," said FKNK director Lino Farrugia last week when announcing the next phase of his lobby's campaign on trap- ping. "Local bird ringers have only ev- er used a limited number of bird ringers at the same three or four sites," Farrugia said in a state- ment that describes trappers as 'researchers' – newspeak for the 'citizen-science' derogation that has just been ruled illegal by the ECJ. "The considerable discrepancy The EU's highest court has told Malta, once again, that bird trapping is illegal. Undeterred, trappers want paid bird ringers to document the birds they trap – and release – hoping that data might keep their controversial pastime 'legal' for years to come