Poachers causing songbird 'disaster'

NICOSIA, Cyprus - Volunteers and police in Cyprus are struggling to tackle illegal songbird trapping operations that kill millions of birds a year and net huge profits for poaching gangs.

Migrating birds, snared with nets or limesticks - glue-covered wooden perches - are served secretly at restaurants on the island as a traditional dish called ambelopoulia.

Volunteer Keziah Conroy of the Germany's Committee Against Bird Slaughter scours scrubland near the resort of Paralimni, using a mobile phone app to locate poaching hot spots.

She climbs a tree to free a blackcap, a small gray warbler, stuck to a limestick. After it flies off she removes another 23 of the traps from vegetation.

"We're saving thousands and thousands of birds this way just by removing these traps," she said.

Trappers can catch thousands of birds a season, selling a dozen for up to $45 to restaurants which serve the dish for nearly twice the price.

It's a tempting prospect on an island still suffering 13 percent unemployment after a 2012-13 debt crisis.

But campaign group BirdLife Cyprus calls poaching, banned under Cypriot and European Union law, an "ecological disaster".

In a study with Britain's Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, it said trappers killed 2.3 million birds in autumn 2016, up from 1.4 million in 2010.

Size for size, that makes Cyprus the second-most deadly bird destination in the Mediterranean, after Malta.

"Ambelopoulia" refers to the blackcap, but the dish of the same name can include several species of songbirds that are grilled, pickled or boiled.

Nets also catch dozens of inedible species as big as owls, which trappers usually throw away, said Tassos Shialis of BirdLife Cyprus.

"The biggest problem is that illegal bird-trapping now has become a large-scale, illegal business," he said.

"An organized trapper is making tens of thousands of euros every year, tax free."

Primary schoolteacher Natasa Kleanthous, from the village of Farmakas, says Cypriots are aware that wild bird populations need protection, but more education is needed.

"Hunting and eating ambelopoulia is part of Cypriot tradition, but I have a problem with people who disregard sustainable principles and overhunt," she said.

Birdlife Cyprus added that the argument of tradition cannot be applied to "an industrialized, large scale and profitable business".

Conroy agrees. "Ultimately, birds don't belong to Cypriots, especially ones that cross multiple borders to get to different countries," she said. "They don't belong to anyone."

Agence France-Presse