I wrote a short piece on the problems of hunting migrant birds in spring on Malta earlier this year. Today I received an email from Birdlife Malta, which gives a glimmer of hope that hunting in spring on Malta may stopped in the future, or at least it could be made illegal. The email is re-produced below.

Please offer your support however you can.

Stop Spring Hunting - Thank you!

THANK YOU
for donating to our Stop Spring Hunting Campaign.

Your support has helped us to raise a total of:
€70,633

Our Stop Spring Hunting campaign was set up to help us raise money to fund a public information campaign here in Malta. With the referendum on spring hunting coming in the next year, we need to do everything we can to convince Maltese people to go out and vote YES to end spring hunting. You have made this possible for us.

The total raised from our Indiegogo campaign will enable us to send leaflets to every voter and mount a powerful campaign in newspapers, on television and on the internet to motivate people to go out and vote.

Thanks to your donations and help sharing our campaign with your friends, we will also be able to fund additional equipment to help us in our yearly hunting monitoring camps. Our volunteers go out every morning and afternoon during the hunting season to monitor illegal hunting, and the money raised will enable us to buy more cameras, binoculars, scopes and even security so we can see more prosecution for illegal hunting.

We are thrilled to have watched the total funds rise over the past two months, and are so pleased to have smashed our target of €50,000. Every donation made, big or small, is hugely significant and we wouldn't be in the position we are now if it weren't for you. We really can't thank you enough!

We greatly appreciate all you have done so far, and we hope you will continue to support us. If you would like to do more to help us, we are currently working on drafting a new letter for the newly elected MEPs, which will be available on our website in the following month.

You can also join BirdLife Malta to help birds and nature in the Maltese Islands. As a member, you will receive our Bird's Eye View members magazine and our monthly e-newsletter to keep you up-to-date with all our work. You can join online here.

Please note, we are aware that some donors are still waiting to receive their perks. We are very sorry for the delay, we are working very hard to get these to you as soon as possible. Thanks for your patience. If you have any queries or problems, please contact: campaigns @birdlifemalta.org

To keep up to date with all our work leading up to the referendum, you can follow us on Facebook, Twitter and even read our blog. Just click the buttons below to find out more about us.