Birdlife Malta’s president Joseph Mangion, has today sent an open letter to the Attorney General, Dr. Silvio Camilleri regarding the recent discovery of a large number of dead protected birds in the Mizieb woodland.

The full contents of the letter is shown below:

Dear Sir,
Attached please find BirdLife Malta President Joseph Mangion’s open letter addressed to your good self regarding the recent discovery of dead protected birds in the Mizieb woodland.
As at 3:30 pm today, the number of protected birds discovered in Mizieb was 192. These consist of 35 Night Herons, 3 unidentified Heron, 38 Marsh Harriers, 33 Falcons, 18 Honey Buzzards and 49 skeletons of raptors (as yet unidentified), 3 Kestrels, 1 Nightingale, 1 Golden Oriole, 4 racing pigeons, 3 Hoopoes and 4 Nightjar.
Kind Regards, Geoffrey Saliba, Campaigns Coordinator BirdLife Malta

Dr Silvio Camilleri Attorney General

The Palace Valletta

21 September 2009

Dear Sir,

We are writing to draw your attention to the ongoing lack of observance to the laws regulating hunting and trapping in Malta, as highlighted by the recent discovery of 192 dead protected birds in Mizieb (as at 21 September 2009, 15:30).

On Sunday, September 20, the Committee Against Bird Slaughter (CABS) and BirdLife Malta’s Raptor Camp volunteers found 76 dead protected birds concealed under stones and rubbish in the Mizieb woodland. Some of the birds discovered were newly killed while others were the remains of birds killed weeks or months earlier. The first bird concealed under a stone was discovered soon after the volunteers from both organisations, which are running two separate bird protection and migration observation camps in Malta, went in around 9 a.m. to check on reports of protected birds observed being shot at while they were leaving their roost sites in the Mizieb area.

The concealment of protected birds illegally shot is a common practice by poachers. It is mostly done to conceal the evidence in order to escape the consequences of the law or to return and recover the body at a later stage. Alternatively, the bird is too damaged for taxidermy purposes. But, the organisations that entered Mizieb on Sunday morning did not expect, by any stretch of the imagination, to discover the shocking number of illegally killed birds in an area that is allegedly under the management of the Federation for Hunting and Conservation (FKNK). Please note that despite our requests to this date the Government has failed to produce any evidence that there is a legal agreement between the FKNK and the Maltese government to “manage” this public land as a hunting reserve.

Our volunteers followed the standard operating procedure of calling the Administrative Law Enforcement Unit to record and report the evidence being discovered. To our shock and amazement, however, when the police arrived none of the usual procedures usually applied to a crime scene was implemented.

Photo shows dead Honey Buzzard – photo taken by Louise Greenwood Birdlife Malta