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Assignment: Cyprus: The battle over songbird slaughter

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A bird is entangled in a net used by poachers in Cyprus to trap migrating songbirds

07/12/2023 GMT

Cyprus: The battle over songbird slaughter

BBC World Service - Assignment, Cyprus: The battle over songbird slaughter

How killing migrating birds became a multi-million dollar criminal business

In Cyprus hundreds of thousands of songbirds are illegally trapped and eaten each year. How did a tradition became a multi-million dollar criminal business?

Cyprus is one of the main resting stops for songbirds as they migrate between Europe, Africa and the Middle East. For centuries, Cypriots trapped and ate a small number of migrating songbirds, as part of a subsistence diet. But over recent decades, the consumption of songbirds became a lucrative commercial business and the level of slaughter reached industrial levels . Millions of birds were killed each year as trappers employed new technologies to attract and capture birds. The methods used by the trappers are illegal under both Cypriot and EU law. In the last few years, both the Cypriot authorities and environmental groups have been fighting back, dramatically reducing the number of birds being trapped. But it remains a multi-million dollar illegal business which has increasingly drawn in organised criminal gangs. For Assignment, Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent sees the trappers in action, and meets those determined to stop the mass killing of birds.

Presenter: Antonia Bolingbroke Kent
Producer: Alex Last
Sound mix: Rod Farquhar
Production Coordinator: Gemma Ashman
Series Editor: Penny Murphy

(Image: A bird is entangled in a net used by poachers in Cyprus to trap migrating songbirds. Credit: AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)

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Cyprus: The battle over songbird slaughter

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