The Malta Ranger Unit has accused Gozo police of failing to intercept a suspected finch poacher in Gozo after rangers said the man fled moments after they reported him, in a case that lands just before Malta reopens its “finch research” season on 20 October.
According to Newsbook, the rangers said they spotted a man in a balaclava trapping finches at sunrise in remote countryside, identified him, documented the use of nets and passed his identity, location and vehicle details to police. They allege that within about a minute of the report, the suspect received a phone call, abandoned the hide and escaped.
That is the central accusation and it is a serious one. It is not proof of who made the call. But it does describe a chain of enforcement that appears to have broken at the exact point when intervention mattered.
The rangers also said the Wild Birds Regulation Unit advised police not to confiscate nets if officers found the suspect away from the trapping site. They further alleged that although police were told which vehicle he was driving, the suspect passed a police vehicle and made it into a village, where the rangers believe he hid the evidence.
If that account is accurate, the problem is not only one suspected poacher getting away. It is that multiple state functions were present on paper — reporting, policing, regulatory oversight — without producing the one result the law is for: seizure, identification of evidence and enforcement.
The MRU told Newsbook that Gozo has no trained Environmental Protection Unit police and said officers took nearly 45 minutes to reach the area after taking the wrong road. That matters beyond one failed interception. Environmental crime is usually defended into abstraction until someone has to act in a field, before dawn, with enough training to know what can be seized and when. The state likes announcing seasons and derogations. It is less convincing on the less glamorous task of enforcement.
This comes with an obvious political backdrop. The trapping regime Malta now describes as research is already under heavy legal pressure. The European Court of Justice ruled in 2018 and again in September 2024 that Malta’s trapping schemes breached the Birds Directive, and the European Commission opened fresh infringement proceedings in November 2025 against the revised derogation, warning that the case could return to court.
That does not establish what happened in this Gozo case. It does show why a failed interception is not a local administrative hiccup. Malta is asking to preserve a disputed regime while a ranger unit is alleging that a known suspect, using nets before the season even opened, was still able to leave with warning and time.
The MRU said it has submitted its information to Gozo police and expects court action against what it described as a well-known individual. No public police account was included in the report. Until one arrives, the allegation sits where it should: squarely on the institutions that had the power to stop the man and, on the rangers’ version, did not.
Harvey Jr. 
Isla Camilleri