Komitee gegen den Vogelmord e. V.
Committee Against Bird Slaughter (CABS)

Komitee gegen den Vogelmord e.V. Committee Against Bird Slaughter (CABS)
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Bolzano - Nest robbers in South Tyrol

Thrush nest in the South Tyrolean fruit-growing region
Thrush nest in the South Tyrolean fruit-growing region

The huge fruit-growing area around the South Tyrolean cities of Bolzano and Merano (Italy) is a particularly attractive breeding ground for thrushes. Despite the intensive agriculture thousands of blackbirds, song thrushes and fieldfare breed in the orchards of the famous holiday area. The nests are easy to reach in the low stem fruit trees and attract many poachers and nest robbers. 

Each year in May, bird trappers traders from across northern Italy come to the valleys around Bolzano to plunder the nests of thrushes. The chicks are then tagged with breeding rings and then sold on as alleged captive-bred birds. The chicks are bought by hunters, who use them as live decoys to hunt songbirds and can thus shoot a particularly large number of thrushes.

Cruel and confined in the decoy cage: Song Thrush
Cruel and confined in the decoy cage: Song Thrush

The phenomenon has been known for a long time, but the local authorities have little chance of catching the perpetrators, despite their great commitment. Up to half a dozen nest robbers are convicted by the Carabinieri (police) every year, but the prospect of lucrative profits continues to attract new poachers to the orchards. In this way, tens of thousands of chicks are brought onto the black market as live decoys -  and sold for around 120 euros each.

The biggest problem is that poachers - unlike "old traditionalists" - have no comparable behaviour patterns. Each perpetrator behaves differently: some park directly at the plantations, others sneak in on foot. Some plunder the nests during the day, others come in during the middle of the night. The way in which they mark the previously identified nests in order to steal the chicks at the right time also drastically varies.

Committee Against Bird Slaughter (CABS) has been active in South Tyrol region since spring 2016. In close consultation with the Carabinieri and in cooperation with our Partner associations, CABS teams are deployed in the fruit plantations during the breeding season and conduct investigations to detect and convict as many nest robbers as possible, to safeguard the breeding sites as best we can.