Bird trapping in Cyprus - an RSPB article  

Conor Jameson, a campaigner working for the RSPB, is working on a project
funded by the Rufford Maurice Laing Foundation and Restore UK to investigate
the extent of illegal bird trapping in the Mediterranean. This autumn he
visited Cyprus to find out whether the joint initiative between the RSPB and
BirdLife Cyprus is making any progress in curbing the massacre of birds.

The refuge of no return

It is estimated that up to 12 million migratory birds are killed each year in Cyprus, by illegal trapping. What do you do about it? Conor Jameson went to find out.

As September became October, I went south with the birds. I made landfall on the starkly beautiful island of Cyprus, in the eastern Mediterranean, to meet colleagues working to protect the birds that choose Cyprus as their migration route to Africa. Millions of birds do this each autumn, funnelling down the eastern edge of the island. They come to rest and refuel, building up energy reserves for the final push south. It is a long and hazardous journey, made more so by the illegal trapping activities that await them here.

In 2001, it was estimated that up to 12 million birds were killed each year at the hands of Cypriot trappers. Bird trapping is big business and, although many of the birds are tiny, in the volumes they are caught their market value is high. A dozen warblers sell for around £10 Cyprus pounds.  Most end up in local restaurants, where they are served up as a speciality dish called ambellopoullia, behind closed doors.

The trapping and trade make some people very wealthy. The trappers use mist nets and limesticks, which birds perch on and stick to: 150 species have been recorded, including the rare and threatened. Action must be taken to stem the supply from the trappers, to stop the demand from the restaurants, to encourage the authorities to make law enforcement a priority and to change attitudes.

The odds have seemed overwhelming, but the RSPB and BirdLife Cyprus have stepped up the action in the last three years. After just three days with our team, I have seen for myself the difference we have been able to make. 

Autumnal Cyprus is parched pale, a landscape of rocky hillsides, dry salt lakes and scattered scrub, etched with white tracks. Most of the illegal trapping is in the south-east corner of the island, including the eastern Sovereign Base Area (SBA) administered by the UK authorities. We are working with the SBA Police here, and elsewhere with the Game Fund Service, the department of Cypriot Government responsible for wildlife protection.

Three years ago our Investigations Unit filmed illegal trapping activity on Sovereign Base land. Soon after, the SBA Police arrested trappers and seized hundreds of mist-nets, attracting a lot of publicity to reinforce the message that illegal trapping would not be tolerated. We then turned our attentions to the restaurants, and with an undercover BBC camera crew we filmed ambellopoullia being served.

Cypriot conservation societies and BirdLife made an official complaint that Cyprus was failing in its duty to protect migratory birds under the Bern Convention. Hundreds of people, many of them RSPB members, wrote to the Cypriot authorities to register their disgust at this annual massacre. The Cypriot Government promised to do more.

In the autumn of 2002 we employed two project officers to monitor 60 survey squares so that trapping activity could be measured year on year, working closely with the SBA Police and Game Fund Service. The authorities also came down hard on restaurants still serving ambellopoullia, and high-profile raids were carried out in busy restaurants, again amid a blaze of publicity. A marked reduction in trapping – and therefore bird deaths – resulted. As I write, there is little or no evidence of ambellopoullia being served openly in Cypriot restaurants.

In autumn 2003 we employed two project officers again. One is seconded from his job as an RSPB warden, the other lives in Cyprus (they cannot be named for security reasons). I was impressed by their familiarity with the landscape and their ability to spot a limestick or netting pole at 500 metres.

On the morning of my first day, we met two animal rights activists, in Cyprus to take direct action against trappers. Our advice was not to interfere with trappers’ equipment, where they found it, but to notify the authorities. We learned later that day that they had ignored this advice and had been caught by some trappers in the act of removing nets. One of them had been assaulted.

The committee of BirdLife Cyprus met that evening. It is made up of Cypriots and UK ex-patriots, under the chairmanship of the charismatic Melis Charalambides.

Melis has been busy. He reported on meetings with the Minister of the Interior, the Assistant Chief of Police, the District Commander of the SBA police, three MPs, three other government ministers and the Attorney General. These high-ranking officials are demanding tougher action from their staff.

Melis accompanied us the following morning. It was a typical day for the team, not exactly my normal day job, scouring the rocky capes for signs of illegal activity. I learned to recognise tell-tale stands of acacia, planted in a characteristic pattern, creating ‘net rides’, or channels, across which mist nets are slung in order to trap birds. These groves are irrigated to produce fresh growth, creating oases of greenery in the dusty landscape.

Birds moved all around us – swallows constantly overhead, sweeping seawards in steady flocks, chats, wheatears and warblers flitting from rock to bush to wire, colours vibrant in the crisp autumn light. I have a picture etched on my retinas of a male redstart, glowing against the azure Mediterranean.

We entered the acacia grove to discover the evidence of a night’s trapping. The mist nets had been removed, but the base poles remained, embedded in concrete. Trampled earth was spattered with blood and sprinkled with feathers of turtle doves, cuckoos, orioles… I found the remains of two long-eared owls, killed and discarded, face down in the dirt. Not on the menu.

Speaker wires trailed in the dirt, leading to audio equipment in the trees used to issue a constant stream of bird calls through the night, to lure passing migrants. The seduction is complete. Little wonder these groves are such a magnet, an apparent sanctuary, from which millions of birds find no way out. A refuge of no return. The mist nets are virtually transparent and soon fill with the struggling shapes of songbirds.

‘What we have seen this morning is crazy’, said Melis, leaving the net rides, mobile phone pressed to his ear as he called the authorities.

Our dismay was compounded by the fact that our field workers had reported this trapping site some days ago. The authorities had not yet had a chance to seize the equipment, never mind attempt a raid to catch the trappers in the act.

Later, we called two Game Fund officers to the site where the animal rights activist had been assaulted. The trappers were still active. Our arrival was enough to scare them off, although we would have preferred the officers to have attempted an arrest.

We brought up key issues with the SBA Police when we visited them on the morning of my last day. District Commander Jim Guy left us in no doubt that he and his officers were fully committed. ‘We’ve seen a substantial reduction in the trapping activity’, he told us. ‘We’ve probably deterred about 90 per cent of the casual poachers, but the business element is still active and no doubt still making big money out there.

‘Make no mistake, these are highly skilled and devious people, with a system of lookouts and mobile phones that makes our job much more difficult. My officers aren’t armed and we are often dealing with people who are. But we will find a way. If you flew over the Pyla range three years ago, you would have seen netting activity everywhere. That has changed now. I’m satisfied there are no restaurants on SBA land selling ambellopoullia now. There’s a greater political will now, too.’

At the time of my visit there had been three arrests, compared with nine the previous year.

‘What we need are arrests with a heavy sentence, the Commander told us. ‘It would help if we increased the fines, but that’s in the hands of the judge. A prison sentence would be a great deterrent too.’

Encouraged, we left for another of the survey squares, just north of the popular resort of Ayia Napa. We parked in the shade of a chapel. A storm was brewing to the north, hills looming bright against the darkening sky. Hundreds of swallows, martins and bee-eaters called ahead of it and over us, surfing the currents high above the pomegranate orchard near where we searched for limesticks, finding little but a dead sparrow with glue- and dust-encrusted feet. We were set to leave when we saw the unmistakable fluttering wings of trapped birds. We called the Game Service. The urge to rush to the aid of the trapped birds is powerful, but we needed authorisation. This was granted, as long as it was ‘safe’.

We hurried to assist the birds, as a rainstorm reached us. I’ve seen plenty of pictures of birds in this predicament, but until I saw it for myself I hadn’t fully grasped how squalid limesticks are. As we got closer, we could see two birds on the first stick – a yellow wagtail and a fan-tailed warbler. In their distress, their instinct had been to peck each other, as though each was the agent of the other’s misfortune. Fresh blood on the tiny warbler’s face contrasted vividly with the lemon yellow breast of the wagtail, their delicate feathers equally incongruous on the gunge-covered stick.

A particular brand of spray-on fabric conditioner is effective in loosening the hold of glue on the birds’ feet and plumage. Using this, we soon freed these first two casualties, but spotted more dangling pathetically in other bushes. Working quickly, we found and removed 21 sticks, freeing 17 birds; some stuck by the feet, others by the tail, a wing, or the face. Each quivering bird felt hot in the hand, its liquid black eyes wide and penetrating. We unstuck a Cyprus pied wheatear (a species found nowhere else), a tree pipit, a whinchat, eight yellow wagtails, two fan-tailed warblers and four willow warblers. Each fluttered and clambered to the undergrowth, in varying states of shock and debilitation.

‘Welcome to Cyprus,’ my colleague muttered, bitterly. He loves most things about his beautiful island, but not this.

As we worked, we saw the pick-up truck that had rolled slowly to a halt at the far end of the field, joined soon afterwards by another vehicle. Our action was not going unnoticed.

There’s a lot of job satisfaction in freeing wild birds from such a fate, although I know in my heart of hearts that this was a token effort. The tasks of protecting birds in the long term – of keeping all those others we won’t be able to rescue out of nets and off limesticks – are in the main done by people behind desks, in the corridors of decision-making power and in the courts. But for today we could see the product of our labour, we had held it in our hands, and we had released it.

We loaded the clump of sticks into the boot of the car, and headed back to dry off, update our charts, file our reports, tell this to anyone who will listen, and keep the pressure on.

Conor Jameson