Two men were today jailed in Malta for hunting illegally in the closed season.Joseph Darmanin, 39, of Qrendi was jailed for two years and fined €9,000 while Rene Bezzina, 27, of Gharghur, was jailed for a year and fined €5,000 after they were found guilty of hunting in the closed season in separate hearings.
Both have also been prohibited, for life, from holding a hunting licence and a licence to keep a firearm. Their firearms were confiscated.
The two men were also found guilty of repeated offences…Inspector Ramon Mercieca prosecuted.
In a statement BirdLife said the two men were jailed for targeting protected White Storks on May 18 this year…It congratulated the ALE on their successful action and said that enforcement had been supported by effective court sentences such as those given in these cases if illegal hunting was to be controlled. (Perhaps this may be a wake up call to UK courts who all too often sentence offenders to just a few hundred hours community service)
“BirdLife Malta is hopeful that future court sentences will increasingly serve as real deterrents to illegal hunting,” BirdLife president Joseph Mangion said.
Read more about this story: http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110519/local/two-arrests-for-illegal-hunting-as-large-flock-of-swans-flies-in.366197
Related Articles:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/02/swans-shot-and-killed-nea_n_830310.html
http://raptorpolitics.org.uk/2011/02/24/50-buzzards-poisoned-in-southern-germany/
Forest of Bowland public leaflet dispensers claim up to £20,000 fine and prison for unintentionally disturbing rare breeding birds. What a joke, when someone is prosecuted for serious wildlife crime/criminal activity, they only receive a few hundred hours community service. What are the more important priorities here, or are these leaflets designed with police input to intimidate and conceal what is really taking place??