In its latest attempt at greenwashing, Malta’s hunting federation FKNK has highlighted a reported spike in European Turtle-dove numbers in Central-Eastern Europe — framing it as a significant recovery. However, while quoting findings from EU member states, FKNK failed to mention the EU Task Force on the Recovery of Birds’ renewed recommendation for a zero harvest across the Central-Eastern flyway — to which Malta belongs.
This selective reporting omits key context: the observed uptick is minor compared to a long-term decline of approximately 340,000 breeding pairs, or 37% since 2005.
According to the EU expert report presented to the Task Force in March 2025:
“In the case of the Central-Eastern flyway, the updated PECBMS data manage to detect some response to the hunting restrictions reported in the last year, that is not statistically significant, and which will need to be confirmed in the coming years. Overall, based on results to date, the main change is a stabilisation in numbers and only a hint of recovery… Given those limitations, the weak population response observed in this flyway, compared to that in the western flyway (and only observed one year so far), indicates that harvest is probably still significant or at levels that are above an as-yet-unknown safety level.”
FKNK fails to acknowledge that Turtle-dove populations along the Central-Eastern flyway have declined by 340,000 breeding pairs since 2005 — a 37% drop in 19 years. As a result, the 10-year PECBMS trend for this flyway has shifted from “stable” to “moderate decline,” with the multiplicative slope now fully below 1, indicating ongoing population decrease.
Malta has once again ignored expert recommendations by opening a 2025 spring hunting season for Turtle-doves — a season already marred by illegalities, including birds being shot even before the official opening (No law, No surveillance, No data: 2025 spring hunting season opens amid unregulated trapping and daily illegalities | BirdLife Malta).
Furthermore, the government has reinstated a derogation banned since 2011, allowing FKNK to trap and keep Turtle-doves. Despite repeated requests by BirdLife Malta to the WBRU and the Ornis Committee chairman, details of this derogation remain undisclosed.
“BirdLife Malta is not surprised by FKNK’s continued use of misleading narratives to greenwash hunting interests,” said Nicholas Barbara, Head of Conservation at BirdLife Malta. These include:
- Rebranding Turtle-dove trapping and captive breeding as “reintroduction”
- Presenting the release of tagged, captive-bred birds as scientific research
- Defending illegal finch trapping under the pretext of “research”
At this point, the only thing left for FKNK to claim is that illegally hunting a vulnerable species on its spring return to Europe is somehow a form of conservation.
Find here, the official email sent by the Nature Conservation Unit (DG ENV) of the European Commission to the members of the Task Force on the recovery of birds. This body includes BirdLife Europe, of which BirdLife Malta is a member.
You can find our press release in Maltese here.