Flocks of migrating birds are nonetheless assembly a merciless finish on their flight path by the island, notably at a British navy base.
Cyprus has seen a “staggering” improve in songbird killing, based on a brand new report monitoring organised wildlife crime.
435,000 birds, together with blackcaps, warblers and robins, have been caught in poachers’ nets final autumn, based on BirdLife Cyprus and RSPB researchers.
That’s a 90,000 improve from the 2022 season, reversing the downward development in songbird killings over the past decade. BirdLife says {that a} drop in enforcement across the British Sovereign Base Areas on the island is partly guilty.
“We cannot allow the progress we have made to be undone and the shocking levels of songbird killings to return to the abhorrent levels we once saw,” says Mark Thomas, head of RSPB investigations.
Until just lately, songbirds have been killed of their thousands and thousands in Cyprus attributable to an area penchant for consuming them pickled or boiled as a dish referred to as “ambelopoulia”.
This observe of trapping the little birds for human consumption was outlawed in 1974 however continued on an industrial scale – and persists right this moment – by way of a hidden black market.
How and the place are songbirds being killed in Cyprus?
Flocks of birds migrating from breeding grounds in Europe to wintering grounds in Africa are assembly a merciless finish on their flight path by Cyprus.
Organised crime teams string up ‘mist nets’ lined in glue between bushes and orchards, or plant limesticks coated with adhesive materials.
Poachers use decoys taking part in birdsong to lure the animals into these sticky snares, earlier than returning to pluck them at daybreak – typically leaving their ft behind as they tear them away.
Blackcaps and the widespread European warbler are the primary species in demand at Cypriot tavernas, however they’ll serve up different birds like robins too. Bigger, inedible birds akin to golden orioles and hawks are additionally indiscriminately caught within the nets.
Authorities uncovered greater than 4.5 kilometres of netting used to lure birds in autumn 2023.
One of the primary areas monitored for fowl trapping is close to Famagusta, which encompasses the Dhekelia Eastern Sovereign Base (ESBA) – considered one of two Sovereign Base Areas (SBAs) that the British navy maintains on the island.
Much of the rise in netting got here from this SBA, the place there was a 41 per cent spike in discoveries of the deadly materials.
What’s behind the rise in songbird killings on a British navy base?
After the “remarkable progress” of recent years, BirdLife Cyprus’ campaigns coordinator Tassos Shialis says 2023’s excessive determine is a “grim reminder of how fast things can go sideways when law enforcement takes a step back.”
The decreasing of fines for limestick trapping from €2,000 to €200 (in 2020) has basically decriminalised their use, whereas large, organised trappers proceed undeterred, they are saying.
In the SBAs, “the understaffing of the SBA Police Anti-Poaching Unit has led to an increase in mist net trapping.”
The British navy tends to maintain a low profile at its Dhekelia and Akrotiri bases, that are invaluable property for surveillance on the sting of the Middle East.
But as songbirds took to the skies over Cyprus, the escalation of violence in Israel and Gaza in October – simply throughout the Mediterranean Sea – has seen the SBAs take up a extra energetic position. RAF Akrotiri was condemned by Cypriot campaigners for launching strikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen in January.
ADVERTISEMENTBirdLife Cyprus doesn’t speculate on how the SBA’s surveillance wants have modified, or how that would have shifted police priorities to different assets. The NGO believes the rationale the SBA Anti-poaching Unit has shrunk is as a result of low trapping ranges recorded within the earlier years, thereby within the eyes of the SBA Police lowering the necessity for a bigger unit.
“We need to maintain anti-trapping momentum, and authorities need to remain committed to a zero tolerance approach to bird trapping,” Shialis says.
“In the Republic of Cyprus, we need to see a renewed commitment from the Government to tackling the organised trappers who continue making huge profits for little risk,” provides the RSPB’s Mark Thomas. “By working together we can make this a thing of the past.”
Cyprus Police and the UK’s Ministry of Defence have been contacted for remark.
