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IAF has been involved, through various stakeholder meetings, with this EU Commission Document. It does not contain any photographs of falconry birds, nor any references to falconry as a concern. Neither are there references to “illegal falconry”. We consider this a successful result; we have struggled since the '70s to convince bureaucrats that illegal traffic in birds of prey in Europe is not a significant issue adversely affecting bird of prey conservation, not like electrocution and not like poisoning.
In stakeholder meetings,we have repeatedly challenged other NGOs to list prosecutions and attempted prosecutions, rather than just repeating hearsay. We estimate there were less than ten cases in the past year in the whole of the EU, a minuscule number compared to poisonings and certainly not worth mentioning in documents more concerned with the multi-million-dollar industrial scale traffic in rhino-horn, elephant-ivory and tiger body parts.
Illegal Trafficking comes under the remit of a Joint Task Force of the Bern Convention, which covers Europe and neighbouring countries (see map), and CMS, which is a United Nations Environmental Programme (see map). It has been vital to falconry to have both conventions on our side. All the work done in Brussels since the late 1970s has been towards this.
Since the Tunis Action Plan of 2013, there have been annual meetings of this joint CMS/Bern “Illegal Killing, Trapping and Trade of Birds Task Force” and IAF has attended their events in Spain, Egypt, Albania and Malta.
The falconer's voice is being heard (see OUR map)
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