Tiny hearts, trembling wings: Inside the brutal world of bird trapping and the heroes who fight it.
Operation dead air: the fight to save Europe’s songbirds, Protect the Wild joins the Committee Against Bird Slaughter and Chris Packham on the frontlines of conservation.
When most people picture a Mediterranean holiday, they think of sun-drenched beaches, crystal waters, and olive groves humming with life.
What they don’t picture are the thousands of tiny songbirds; Blackcaps and other Warblers, Robins and Thrushes dying in unimaginable pain.
Caught in glue. Tangled in nets. Their struggles to escape, as they fight to live, only causes them to become further stuck.
But that is the truth behind the postcard.
And there is only one group of brave, relentless, frontline conservationists standing between these birds and their killers:
The Committee Against Bird Slaughter (CABS).
The only ones fighting back
CABS are not your average conservation charity. They are the last line of defence.
While most people sleep, they are out there, in the dead of night, under olive trees and starlit skies, freeing trapped birds, dismantling nets, collecting evidence, and facing down violent trappers.
They work across Cyprus, Malta, Sardinia, Italy, France, and Lebanon, every place where migration meets menace, to stop raptors being shot from the sky and migratory songbirds being tortured for a cruel and illegal trade.
Their opponents? Ruthless wildlife criminals and organised crime gangs. Men who profit from pain.
Their mission? Justice. Compassion. Protection.
And they do it all on little to no sleep, driven only by love and the desperate need to stop the slaughter.
Every year, they save thousands of lives, tiny, precious, irreplaceable lives.
A crime against nature
The reason these birds are killed in Cyprus is as senseless as it is cruel: a banned dish, one made illegal in 1974, called ambelopoulia. In Cyprus alone it is estimated 500,000 thousand birds are illegally slaughtered every year.
This so-called “delicacy”, made from the bodies of these protected songbirds, is outlawed across Europe. It is illegal to trap, kill, sell, or serve them. Yet the killing continues.
Because laws mean nothing when they are not enforced.
CABS knows this too well. They have seen the brutality firsthand.
They have held the birds, trembling, terrified and felt their tiny hearts fluttering in their hands.
They have watched the indifference of police and governments who turn away while protected wildlife is slaughtered in plain sight.
Why we were there
Recently, Protect the Wild joined CABS and other sabs in Cyprus as part of Chris Packham’s and Megan MCcubbin’s “Operation Dead Air”, a mission to expose the barbaric slaughter of Europe’s songbirds.
What we witnessed was life-changing.
For two intense weeks, we saw both the worst and the best of humanity: the cruelty of trappers and the unwavering courage of those who fight them.
The lawlessness, the violence, the apathy of the authorities were staggering.
But CABS, this small, fierce, compassionate team, were unstoppable.
They are heroes in the truest sense of the word: compassionate, clever, and unflinching in the face of danger.
The night work
In Cyprus, most trapping happens under cover of darkness.
Mist nets stretch invisibly across trees, silent death traps that birds fly into after long, exhausting migrations.
Limesticks are coated in a gluey paste of plum resin, honey, and water, a medieval cruelty that holds a bird fast when they lands.
To make it worse, poachers use recorded birdsong as bait, decoy calls that lure the tired, hungry birds toward what they think is safety. These birds fly thousands of miles across Europe to overwinter in Africa and other Mediterranean islands, Cyrpus is a vital pit stop necessary for recuperating. Instead of being safe, they face agonising death.
CABS patrols these sites every night. They find the traps, record evidence, and free any birds still alive.
They are met with hostility, threats, and violence, yet they go back, again and again. Because to them, every life matters.
Standing up to the killers
One of the most infamous trappers in Cyprus is a man known as Akas, a name now infamous thanks to CABS, Chris Packham’s and Megan Mccubin’s live streams.
When CABS occupied public land near his compound, they made one thing clear: Europe is watching.
At first, it worked. The killing stopped, and trapped birds were released. But soon, Akas and his masked men returned, and the slaughter resumed.
CABS called the police. They didn’t act.
Instead, Akas’s gang began driving at volunteers to intimidate them. They pepper-sprayed CABS members, tore down nets before police could see them, and led officers away from the crime scenes.
Still, CABS refused to leave.
And thanks to their persistence, and the global pressure they stirred up through social media, Akas has now been raided three times.
Three raids after ten years of inaction. That is the power of visibility. That is the power of CABS.
Violence and courage
Then there was Trikkis, another name whispered with fear.
PTW had the misfortune of coming face to face with him, he screamed in my face:
“Get out of here, I’ll kill you!”
Even the Cypriot wildlife officer told me afterward, “If I wasn’t there, he would have hit you.”
Trikkis has been in and out of jail, yet still traps without fear. The police know him, and still, they do nothing.
That day, his men tore down nets before we could save the trapped birds. But later, CABS found a limestick tree and released 30 to 40 songbirds, a moment of pure joy and relief. Watching those tiny bodies take flight, knowing they were safe, it was everything.
Video of PTW and CABS working to free birds trapped on limesticks.
Then, Trikkis returned. He slashed CABS’ car tyres and, alongside two masked thugs, hurled boulders at CABS. The wildlife wardens stood by, too scared of Trikkis themselves to intervene and stop the damage.
Days later, after relentless exposure and mounting public pressure online, Trikkis was finally raided. Police seized over 1,000 dead protected birds and released 147 live ones from his traps.
Thanks to sustained pressure, we can now confirm that Cypriot police have raided Trikkis a total of three times, and that he and his organised gang have accumulated over €62,000 in fines, likely the largest penalty ever issued to a trapper of his kind for wildlife crime.
This victory, like every victory CABS achieves, was paid for in fear, sweat, and sheer willpower.
CABS has welcomed this long-overdue action after years of frustration and official inaction, stating:
“Only through consistency, transparency, and zero tolerance can authorities ensure that wildlife crime does not continue to flourish under the guise of tradition.”
The organisation added that sustained enforcement is essential if the illegal trade in wild birds is ever to be truly dismantled.
The beating heart of conservation
CABS are proof that compassion and courage can change the world.
They are not a big, glossy charity with PR budgets and slogans. They are a handful of determined, brilliant people putting themselves in danger to protect the most vulnerable.
They are the frontline.
They are the reason thousands of birds live to fly another day.
Without them, there would be nothing standing between poachers and species annihilation.
How you can help
One of the most vital tools in this fight is technology. To truly expose and prevent trapping before it happens, CABS urgently need a Mavic 3 Enterprise T thermal drone, a high-spec piece of kit that can detect trapping sites and poachers under cover of darkness. This is vital because as PTW left this year CABS noted that trappers were killing birds and taking down nets before sunrise. This meant the current CABS drone could not be used to gather evidence. Protect the Wild is working to help make a thermal drone happen for next year’s operations, because with this drone, CABS could spot illegal activity faster, gather more evidence, rescue more birds, and confront the organised crime gangs head on.
So, If you’ve read this far, you already care. So now, here’s how you can help CABS keep fighting:
Donate to the fundraiser we’re set up for a thermal drone: the single most effective tool in detecting traps at night. Donate and share for every single little beating heart that is stuck, or has been stuck, in the cruel mist nets and on limesticks.
Travel consciously. Tourism can help. The more people visit Cyprus, the harder it is for poachers to hide their crimes.
Stay alert. If you see illegal trapping, report it to CABS or local authorities.
Keep sharing. Social media pressure works, it forces governments to act.
Because every bird matters.
Because silence helps the killers.
And because CABS are out there, right now, fighting for life.
They are the ones doing what must be done.
The ones who refuse to give up.
The ones who give everything, so the sky is still filled with fluttering wings and bird song.
Migratory birds that travel the world, they belong to no one and everyone and no one has the right to rob us, the world, of the pleasure they can bring. Cyprus, Malta, Sardinia, Italy, France, and Lebanon take heed, for until this ecocide is taken seriously by Governments and law enforcement you are pariah’s of the world, costing us all, as we move towards, as already apparent, our very own silent spring.
You say "Travel consciously. Tourism can help. The more people visit Cyprus, the harder it is for poachers to hide their crimes". Would it not be better for a total boycott on Cyprus of tourism and buying their goods. The Cypriot authorities would be very concerned with loss of income. Maybe that would encourage them to jail these despicable scum bags.