Bird protection efforts in Southern Italy have have met with their greatest success this spring, according to the Committee Against Bird Slaughter (CABS).
Some 100 Italian volunteers took part in 3 bird protection camps run by Italian organisations LAC, WWF and LIPU in Lazio and Campania. The operations covered the complete time window of the passage of the late migrant song birds, a period of six weeks from mid-April to the end of May, and were conducted in close cooperation with the forest and regional police.
The results were:- 183 fall traps, 1 bow trap, 2 nets and 4 electronic decoy devices (not a single one on Ischia!) located and removed
- only 9 poachers caught red-handed
- five shotguns, 360 rounds of ammunition and two wire snares for wild boar confiscated.
Alexander Heyd of CABS, said “Even the most optimistic of us would never have believed that matters could turn out like this. There were no Whinchat traps set in the terraced gardens on Ischia, no shots were fired at migrating Turtle Doves from the cliffs of the Island of Procida and no nets blocked the passage of the Wheatear in the Ponza macchia.”
Detailed information on the operations (at present only in German) can be found at http://www.komitee.de/.
