Bird trade in Malta
Wild birds are big business in Malta. In particular, goldfinches, linnets and hawfinches are coveted cage birds for which supposed bird lovers are willing to pay good prices. Until 2017, trapping for finches with nets was still permitted, but trading birds taken from the wild has long been illegal. Today, bird trapping continues illegally in Malta - hundreds of trapping sites are still active and the black market is flourishing as ever. In Malta's capital, Valletta, a large bird market takes place every Sunday morning, where the "feathered goods" change hands on a grand scale.
The local bird trappers are hardly able to meet the great demand - and the few successful breeders certainly cannot. Malta's pet traders are therefore increasingly resorting to finches caught illegally in southern Italy and smuggled into the country by boat.
Live decoys are another source of money that some bird trappers have tapped into. When hunting for quails, turtle doves, song thrushes and golden plovers, the use of decoys is permitted, some may be caught legally with exemptions. The sale of the birds is prohibited, only captive bred decoys are allowed on the market. And yet you can always find freshly caught golden plovers on internet portals.
But not only live birds bring profit. On Malta there is still illegal trophy hunting for birds of prey, storks, flamingos, herons and other beautiful or large birds. Hunting tours overseas are also popular with Maltese trophy hunters. The birds are stuffed and often end up in huge taxidermy collections. The collectors are interested in owning several specimens of each species, preferably both sexes and different colour morphs. On Malta there are hundreds of thousands of protected birds as preparations in private households. The poachers earn as much from their passion for collecting as they do from their preparation studios and hunting travel companies.
The fight against the illegal bird trade is not easy, traders and buyers mostly operate in closed circles of the black market. Our demands for better control of the Valletta Bird Market, which is only a few blocks away from the national police headquarters, have not been met, nor have we been able to improve monitoring of trade on the Internet. Instead of taking decisive action against the illegal trophy collections, the Maltese state has even legalised all preparations in several amnesties!
We have been successful in our work against the smuggling of songbirds between Sicily and Malta - the Italian customs have repeatedly stopped large bird shipments to Malta as a direct result of our information. With our bird protection camps we also ensure that fewer and fewer finches are caught on Malta, and the number of protected species for trophy collections is also declining due to our efforts.