The Wall Street Journal-20080118-In Tiny Malta- Hunters Cry Foul In EU Bird Dispute- Island Is Migratory Stop And Marksmen Are Many- Dr- Raine Counts Casualties
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In Tiny Malta, Hunters Cry Foul In EU Bird Dispute; Island Is Migratory Stop And Marksmen Are Many; Dr. Raine Counts Casualties
TA'XBIEX, Malta -- This is one place you wouldn't want to be a falcon.
Andre Raine's digital photos illustrate the perils of a life aloft on this tiny island: a marsh harrier with a gaping shotgun wound. An alpine swift pierced through the wing. A bloodied pallid harrier splayed on a blue towel.
"There are only five to 50 breeding pairs in Europe," Dr. Raine, an ornithologist, said of the dead bird. "This is one less now."
Twice a year, all sorts of birds migrate between Europe and Africa. A popular stopover on the long-haul flight is Malta, a sunny speck in the Mediterranean south of Sicily. Joining the birds in the air is a lot of lead: Malta boasts one of the highest concentrations of licensed bird hunters of any nation anywhere.
Bird-protection groups complain about the Maltese penchant for pump- action punishment. Birders have reported seeing hunters in fishing boats plugging away at flamingos, and hunters chasing a crane onto the grounds of a convent. The area near the runway at Malta International Airport offers some choice shooting: For birds accustomed to northern Europe, it's a welcome stretch of flat grassland on an otherwise craggy island.
Volunteers bring downed birds to the offices of conservation group BirdLife Malta in Ta'Xbiex, a small suburb of the capital, Valletta. Dr. Raine, who works for BirdLife, snaps their pictures -- his digital mortuary logged 80 protected birds last year. The wounded are dispatched for veterinary care.
Tensions over hunting and trapping are running high as elections approach this year. Many hunters are nursing a grudge against Malta's government. The ruling Nationalist Party, they say, told them their sport would be fine if they voted to join the European Union in 2004.
But now that Malta is in, the hunters have become the hunted. Brussels has condemned Malta for several abuses of the EU's 1979 Birds Directive, and expressed anger at the illegal shooting of protected species. The EU's environment commissioner calls Malta's permissive attitude "madness" and is likely to take Malta to the European Court of Justice. He hopes to force an end to the spring shooting of turtledoves and quail.
Hunters grouse that their traditional pastime is under assault by bureaucrats intent on homogenizing Europe. Hunting lobbyist Joseph Perici Calascione uses a Maltese phrase to describe the country's relative unimportance in European affairs: Hanqa ta' hmar fid-dezert. Like a donkey braying in the desert.
Restraining hunters in Malta will be a tall order. Every morning in season, Maltese in large numbers take to the hills before dawn, manning rows of blinds arrayed like turrets toward the sea. "You wouldn't be able to find one plumber during the spring season," says Henry Fenech Azzopardi, a travel agent and avid hunter who is on a committee advising the government on the sport.
A spring ban, he says, would be "very unfair for those many thousands of hunters who voted to enter Europe believing spring hunting would continue." He says he condemns illegal hunting, but "law-abiding hunters are being penalized."
In the hunters' stronghold of Rabat, Michael Azzopardi held court one afternoon at his gun shop. He had been up since 4:30 that morning. "This is not a sport. This is like a feeling in your heart," Mr. Azzopardi said. "If they stop this season, the April season . . ." He trailed off. "It is better to put me in jail."
Hunting advocates say tiny Malta bags an insignificant number of birds, compared with the rest of Europe.
"In autumn, we get very little, if anything," says Mr. Perici Calascione, who is the spokesman for the hunters' lobby, known as FKNK. "I haven't shot my gun for four days. If I go to England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, I could kill in 10 days what I bag here in 10 years."
Above the town of Siggiewi one recent morning, gunshots resounded before the sun. Stone and concrete blinds dotted fields at the crest of a hill. A rooster kicked up a racket as dawn approached. Shotguns barked in the valley below. A lone black bird came low over the back of a blind. A gun cracked, and the bird arced like a falling Frisbee to the ground. A hunter scurried out to collect it.
Being caught in the cross-fire is no fun. Birdshot rattles on roofs; dead fowls land in swimming pools. Upon first moving to the Maltese countryside, an Englishwoman, who asks not to be identified, says that such was the level of gunfire, "we thought we were going to be killed." Once, her husband was peppered with pellets while gardening.
Ray Vella, a park ranger for BirdLife, says he got a face full of small birdshot in October. One pellet lodged in the flesh between his eyes. The shooter, he says, "ran off shouting obscenities."
The FKNK condemned the shooting, but relations with BirdLife are strained. BirdLife is allied with Britain's influential Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. Dr. Raine is from Bermuda. BirdLife's chief, a veteran activist named Tolga Temuge, is Turkish.
The FKNK isn't thrilled about foreigners butting into Maltese affairs. In one long press release, it accused Mr. Temuge of creating "controversy and aggression." It continued: "We were not afraid of some 30,000 Turks some time back, so we're sure that we're not going to be afraid of one." It was referring, of course, to the Great Siege of Malta in 1565, when Ottoman Turks under Suleiman the Magnificent were rebuffed by the Knights Hospitaller.
Mr. Temuge calls the FKNK "a group of bullies."
Bird work has led Dr. Raine around the world. Peru, the Seychelles, Zambia. When a job opened up in Malta, he jumped. Thanks to its location on migratory flyways and reputation as a hunters' paradise, Malta is a mecca for conservationists studying threats to avian populations. Birdwise, "it is the black hole of Europe," Dr. Raine says.
BirdLife has a network of volunteer spotters across the island primed for illegal hunting. On a recent afternoon, Dr. Raine's cellphone chirped with a text message from one of them: "They just shot at a crane but luckily was too high! Hunter not seen."
The spotter was positioned near the airport. In a field abutting the landing strip were three decoys used to lure golden plovers. A hunter waited with trapping nets to snap up any that touched down. "If they hadn't turned the airport into a no-hunting bird sanctuary, you'd probably have hunters walking along the runway shooting," said Dr. Raine.
After checking out the scene of the attempted crane shooting, he drove to Dingli Cliffs on Malta's southwestern edge. The vista is awesome: To one side, an escarpment plunges a hundred feet to the sea. Hunting blinds are everywhere facing the water where the birds come in. Green spray paint marks them: "Tidholx" (no entry), "Private Property," and "RTO" (reserved to owner).
A racing pigeon, not legal to hunt, flew into the whipping wind. It disappeared behind a ridge line. A shotgun cracked. Dr. Raine scrambled up and scanned the terrain. Bird and shooter were gone.
