TIRANA, Nov. 7 – An Albanian environmental watchdog says it has identified illegal hunting, logging, animals kept in captivity and fires endangering rare species during this year, defying moratoriums and sanctions in place, although at a slower pace compared to a year ago.
The Protection and Preservation of Natural Environment in Albania, PPNEA, says it has identified illegal hunting at a wetland just outside Durres, animals kept in captivity and offered for sale online, logging and intentional fires in the northern Albanian woods of the in the Munella Mountain, the country’s sole sanctuary of the endangered Balkan lynx.
Brown hares and bears being killed and advertised as trophies on social networks or endangered species such as the Balkan Lynx kept embalmed at restaurant bars in addition to caged bear cubs held in captivity are some of the cases the local PPNEA watchdog has identified on its dedicated syrigjelber.info portal serving as a hotline to report cases of abuse over the past couple of years.
The watchdog says it identified 18 cases of environmental and animal abuse from Sept. 2017 to Sept. 2018, down from 25 a year earlier. Cases of abuse include illegal hunting, logging, fires, animals kept in captivity and embalmed with environmental crime also taking place in protected areas.
While a slowdown in environmental crime is reported for the past year, the real number of cases of abuse is estimated to be far bigger as the figures reported by the watchdog only include sporadic cases reported by environmentalists, local residents or online posts of wild and protected animals advertised for sale with owners unaware of legal consequences for their actions.
More than 9 hunting hides placed at a small area at the central Albania Fllake-Sektori Rinia wetland and used by hunters to practise illegal hunting were identified by environmentalists earlier this year. Environmentalists says they also found hunting cartridges and other materials proving ongoing poaching at the wetland, one of country’s most important sites for water birds situated some 10 km outside Durres.
Elsewhere in northeastern Albania, environmentalists reported illegal logging and fires posing a threat to the already critically endangered Balkan Lynx, a handful of whom live at the Munella mountain region. Local PPNEA environmental watchdog says declaring the Munella Mountain a protected area would save the current few Balkan lynx from human-caused extinction and protect several other locally endangered species breeding there such as the brown bear, the wolf, the wild goat and the roe deer.
The latest reported case of animal abuse identified by local environmentalists involves two wolf cubs advertised for sale for €200 at a local trade portal last October.
Whistle-blowers earlier identified hares caught in traps in northeastern Albania and offered for sale online. Reported cases earlier this year also include two roe deer being held in captivity at a small bar on the banks of Tirana’s artificial lake and a tortoise on sale for as cheap as 1,000 lek (€8) at a downtown open-air market in the capital city, showing what experts warn that “environmental crime does not only occur in rural areas and far away from the public’s attention, but also close to the center of Tirana, seen by thousands of people and relevant institutions.”
Earlier this year, a German researcher assessing the effectiveness of the hunting ban that Albania has been applying for the past four years collected evidence proving that illegal hunting in Albania continues even in protected areas although the cases identified are sporadic and significantly lower compared to early 2014 when Albania imposed the ban.
Four Paws watchdog has earlier described Albania as home to some of the saddest bears in Europe with dozens of bears and cubs trapped in tiny cages as ‘tourist attractions’ at restaurants, petrol stations or hotels as a way of luring customers.
An estimated 180 to 250 brown bears currently live in the wild in Albania while another 50 are believed to be held captive, mainly for entertainment purposes.
Environmentalists have also identified golden eagles (Aquila chrysaetos), the symbol of Albania’s national red and black flag, kept in captivity, the killing of red foxes and a restaurant which had turned into a museum of embalmed species in a northern Albania beach areas.
Albania has banned hunting for the past couple of years and imposed a new five-year moratorium until 2021 to put an end to uncontrolled and illegal hunting, which has decimated wildlife populations in the country over the last two and a half decades after the collapse of the communist regime in the early 1990s.
In late 2017, animal rights activists submitted more than 37,000 signatures in a petition addressed to MPs seeking to make animal cruelty punishable by fines and even imprisonment by amending the country’s Criminal Code, but the legal initiative that needs a qualified majority of 84 votes, three-fifths of the current 140-seat Parliament, has not been examined yet.
Fier zoo animals relocated
An animal abuse scandal featured last month by the UK’s Daily Mail forced Albanian authorities to close down a private zoo and relocate malnourished and mistreated wild animals kept in shocking conditions.
Three lions, a three-legged bear, a zebra, fox, a waterbuck, a red deer and three fallow deer were relocated last month to the zoo in Tirana where new enclosures for the rescued animals were waiting.
Four Paws, a Vienna-based international animal welfare organization, said the eleven neglected animals including eight-year-old ‘Lenci,’ a lion with a black eye in need of surgery whose pictures went viral, were safely taken away, but the zebra unexpectedly died following relocation to the Tirana zoo.
“There is always a residual risk when using anaesthesia – especially if the animal has been kept in poor conditions. Sedation and the two-hour transfer were obviously too much for the weakened zebra,” says the Four Paws which in 2016 pushed Albanian authorities to enforce a ban on the cruel keeping.
