Dear CABS Friends and Supporters,
After a short break, CABS-teams are back in action. Our conservationists are already working in France, northern Italy, Sardinia and Cyprus to stop poachers. To leave no stone unturned Monitoring the ban on ‘stone-crush traps’ in the south of France! For centuries if not millennia, hunters in the French Cévennes have caught and killed songbirds with brutal stone-crush traps (heavy stone slabs propped up with small sticks and baited with berries). While the tradition has only been banned for a year – this week, a committee team has inspected all known trapping sites and surrounding areas in the departments of Lozère and Aveyron and found no active traps! The bird trappers are clearly complying with the ban! It is the successful conclusion of a campaign that we first started back in 2006 and which ended with the ban on stone-traps in co-operation with our French partners at LPO. In December 2023, the Constitutional Court in Paris made a final ruling that this barbaric trapping method is not compatible with EU law. This means that stone crush-traps have finally become extinct throughout Europe, as even in Pavia (northern Italy) - the second known place where they were still used until a few years ago – no active traps were found during an inspection before Christmas! Definitely a successful call for celebration! Successful operation against illegal waterfowl hunting in northern Italy
The Po estuary is one of the most important roosting and wintering areas for ducks, geese, waders and herons in the Mediterranean. Hunting is still legal and very widespread. Unfortunately, many hunters do not respect the law and either shoot protected species or use illegal hunting methods. This weekend, in the south of the vast wetland, a team from the Committee Against Bird Slaughter (CABS), together with the police, caught two people using illegal electronic decoys to hunt ducks. The perpetrators tried to escape in a boat but were tracked by a drone in the confusing terrain and later arrested. Two decoys and two firearms were seized.
Action against bird-trapping in Sardinia The Italian Mediterranean island of Sardinia is the only place in Europe where ‘horsehair snares’ are still used to catch birds today. The traps, in which songbirds are strangled, used to be widespread everywhere - in Germany until the middle of the 19th century. While they have practically disappeared everywhere, they can still be found in Sardinia in the mountains not far from the capital Cagliari. In dense strawberry tree forests, they are illegally mounted on branches and on the ground in winter to catch the thrushes and robins that over winter here. The birds are regional delicacies. CABS has been working against these brutal traps since 1999 – this winter, two committee teams are once again working in the south of Sardinia. In the 2000s, we regularly found over 10,000 snares during our bird protection camps, but fortunately poaching is now on a noticeable decline here too. We wish all readers of our bird protection newsletter all the best to the new year,
Alexander Heyd, Lloyd Scott and the CABS-team |
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