Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1527749
7 gozotoday | FRIDAY • 11 OCTOBER 2024 NEWS Lukas Micallef is President of Federazzjoni Kaccaturi Nassaba Konservazzjonisti (FKNK) Lukas Micallef NOWHERE in its judgment of 19 September 2024 did the Eu- ropean Court of Justice in Lux- embourg negatively criticise the importance and efficiency of the Maltese Government's Citizen Science Finch Research Pro- gramme of 2020, 2021 and 2022. On the contrary. The judgement however questioned the use of the Programme's method as the satisfactory solution to answer the research question. The following facts evidence the effectiveness of the Research Programme method over the bird-ringing alternative: Data from the European Un- ion for Bird Ringing (EURING) website (EURING, n.d.) shows that for 44 years (1965 - 2020, except for some unknown rea- son for the years 1984 - 1995), the MLV (Malta, Valletta) scheme, BirdLife Malta's local monopoly on bird ringing, net- ted and ringed (using mist nets and pre-recorded bird callers, with no restrictions on time or place, which in fact includes most operations from bird sanc- tuaries), 2,683 individual finch- es of the seven finch species that Maltese trappers have histori- cally targeted as part of their so- cio-cultural lifestyle passion. The 2,683 specimens include 105 hawfinches (Coccothraustes coccothraustes - Taż-Żebbuġ); 946 chaffinches (Fringilla coe- lebs - Sponsun); 61 goldfinch- es (Carduelis carduelis - Gar- dell); 40 siskins (Spinus spinus - Ekra); 962 linnets (Linaria cannabina - Ġojjin); 227 serins (Serinus serinus - Apparell); and 342 greenfinches (Chloris chlo- ris - Verdun). This results in an average total of 383 finches per species, an average of 61 finches per year over 44 years and an av- erage of 9 finches per species per year over 44 years. Furthermore, EURING data on ring recoveries (live recaptures of previously ringed birds by the same scheme) show that be- tween 1940 and 2020, BirdLife Malta had only 8 ring recover- ies of finches, 6 chaffinches and 2 greenfinches (du Feu, Joys, Clark, Fiedler, Downie, van Noordwijk, Spina, Wassenaar & Baillie, 2009). According to the Malta Wild Birds Regulation Unit (WBRU) Reports and Statistics - Game Reporting for 2016 and 2017 (the only years for which this official data is available), which lists the seven species of finches trapped (live-captured), Maltese trappers caught a total of 15,914 trapped finches, broken down as follows: 949 hawfinches (and here it should be noted that in 2017 trapping stopped in November, a full month before the open season, when the respective bag limit of 500 hawfinches was reached); 3,208 chaffinches; 488 goldfinches; 1,835 siskins; 5,463 linnets; 2,178 serins; and 1,793 greenfinches. This gives a to- tal average of 2,273 finches per species, a total average of 7,957 finches per year over two years and a total average of 1,137 finches per species per year over two years. The blatant effectiveness of the trapper method of live finch capture compared to the bird ringing method could not be more obvious (see Table). This stark reality is all the more as- tonishing given that the trappers were restricted to pre-registered sites (never in bird sanctuaries), to the use of traditional selective clap nets, to live decoy finch- es, to an open season of three months from October to De- cember, and to time, two hours before sunrise to two hours after sunset. On 21 June 2018, in case C 557/15, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Luxembourg had ruled against Malta for al- lowing the trapping of live finch- es in 2014 and 2015. The ECJ's main argument was that Malta did not have sufficient scientific evidence of the reference popu- lation of finches migrating over the Maltese islands. In response, the Maltese gov- ernment introduced the Cit- izen Science Finch Research Programme in the autumn of 2020, essentially a catch-and-re- lease system in which specially licensed, experienced trappers caught finches using their tra- ditional methods. Each catch is checked for the presence of a scientific ring and, if present, details are recorded and the finch is released back into the wild. Birds without scientific rings are also released immedi- ately. The Federation for Hunt- ing and Conservation - Malta (FKNK) prompted the govern- ment to issue a call for inter- national qualified bird ringers (paid) to accompany the trap- pers and ring as many as pos- sible finches caught (without a scientific ring) with a EURING ring, which BirdLife Malta was willing to provide, before re- lease. It also stands to reason that the more active the widespread research sites are, the more data will be obtained. In contrast, the local bird ringers have only ever used a limited number of bird ringers (#18) at the same three or four sites. Consequently, the considerable discrepancy in the number of researchers, the ex- tensive network of active trap- ping sites and their widespread distribution will undoubtedly facilitate wider conservation ob- jectives in the future, as well as providing a more comprehen- sive understanding of the refer- ence countries of finch popula- tions. Therefore, as a way forward, both the FKNK and the Gov- ernment will pursue the FKNK's proposal to employ foreign bird ringers, besides other scientific exercises in the pipeline, so that the tried and tested proficiency of the trapper's method, as op- posed to the bird ringer's meth- od of capturing finches, can provide the scientific data of the finch reference populations mi- grating over the Maltese islands. No other satisfactory alternative solution to the Government's citizen science finch research programme