Every year, tens of thousands of quails, a migratory bird species, are killed in the Western Balkans. Many are shot by Italian hunters, who take advantage of weaker laws and law enforcement in countries like Bosnia and Herzegovina. Environmentalists are concerned the nature crime is growing out of control.
Text: Vanja Stokic and Ajdin Kamber (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Gianluca Liva (Italy) and Ingrid Gercama (Netherlands)
Photos: Ajdin Kamber
Clouds of mist stretch out over a vast plain covered with grass. It is 7 am, and the summer sun has long risen in Livno, a mountain covered town in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. A swoop of swallow flies over the field. Then two gunshots break the morning silence. Down in the valley, two hunters are walking in the fields, their dogs running around enthusiastically, barking loudly.
Two hours later, a police car races over the road to where the hunters were last seen. The vehicle stops next to the field. Four officers get out. Two proceed to block the road. Two march through the field until they reach the hunters.
A local tour guide – who has taken two Italian hunters with him – spots the police. One hunter comes down with his dog. His friend is on the field, shooting, unaware that he may soon be in a lot of trouble.
“What are you hunting?”, asks a police officer to the Bosnian guide, who is wearing a cap with the logo of the Italian Federation of Hunters (Federcaccia).
“Quails,” he replies.
The policeman learns that the hunters have travelled from Italy, with the intention of training their hunting dogs. The local guide has answers ready to all his questions but still looks nervous. He hands over guns and hunting permits, papers for the dogs, and passports. He cooperates fully, explaining that he works with the hunting agency Lupo from Livno. The hunters brought dogs from Italy, and the agency provided them with a guide, rifles, a vehicle and all necessary permits. Everything seems above board.
“I’m having fun,” answers one of the Italians when asked why he is there.
Quail is a chicken-like bird, a bit smaller than a pigeon. Hunters are interested in it because they can hunt for the same animal for hours. Since it hides very well, hunters chase it out of its hiding place with the help of a dog. When it takes off, they shoot at it. If they miss it, it will not fly away. After 20-30 meters, the bird will descend again and hide. Then the dogs try to find it again.
But not far from the group, an illegal device is hidden in the grass. When the police officers find it, the situation suddenly changes. They call for reinforcements. For use of this device during hunting, fines range from 1,500 to 15,000 KM (750 – 7,500 EUR) for a legal entity, often a registered business like a hunting agency, and up to 1,500 KM (750 EUR) for individuals.
The Italians look pale. The situation grows tense. “Can we go?” “You can’t leave,” the officer says, sweat pearling around his temple. “It is protocol.”
For the next two hours, police officers stand next to the device. The sun is blazing – it is almost 40 degrees Celsius, and the police has no water or any other way to protect them from the sun – but they can not leave it unattended.
Then, two crime inspectors, a hunting inspector and a forensics officer, arrive. They immediately take the case very seriously. One, a blue gloved forensic officer starts to demarcate the field, now a crime scene. Yellow Italian made Fiocci bullets scattered around the field were collected, photos taken of a brand new electronic device, made in Italy.
The device is illegal as it attracts birds by imitating their sounds. Quails believe that it is safe for them to come to the field and look for food. It can be easily purchased in Bosnia and Herzegovina, on the internet. Interested buyers can find online advertisements, with prices ranging from 100 to 300 KM (50 to 150 EUR).
There are not a lot of quails left in this part of Bosnia, so this device is used very often. It could have been installed by anyone: hunters, the hunting agency or the hunting association managing this field… It is impossible to prove who it belongs to. The officers take it as evidence and later find a fingerprint on it. The entire case is under the jurisdiction of the cantonal Inspection Department. The police are only here to provide support.
“In the past four years, since I have been in this position […] we have had the increasing arrival of foreign citizens, that is, Italians, to hunt quail,” says Nikola Ljuboja, the hunting inspector in Livno. “They are attracted to bird hunting, that is, they really like quail.”
When the hunting inspector receives a report about illegal hunting, mostly from citizens and activists, he has to travel to the location where it was found. Then comes the difficult process of proving who put the device there. No one can be punished without solid evidence.
“When it comes to foreign citizens, if we determine they are guilty, it is a criminal offense. They are taken to court which decides if they are guilty or not”, the inspector says.
One night earlier…
It is past midnight. The crickets chirp. A car, headlights on, whizzes past. “Can you hear something?”, “No, can you?”. “Stttt”, “Wait! There.” “You can hear it now, the sound.” Four reporters walk into an empty field, hands behind their ears. It is a trick to hear the electronic decoy devices used for the illegal hunting of quails. They tread carefully.
Sometimes the devices are guarded by people armed with guns. It is pitch dark, and the team has to work fast. There is not much time to seek through the fields used by hunting agencies in the area. The devices are turned on at around 10 p.m. and are turned off by a timer at 5 a.m. The hunters arrive at 6 a.m.
The stars and half moon are brightly lid. “Do you hear it?”, “Yes”, “Yes”. Wading through the grass, growing taller with every step. The sound – a repetitive, harch mechanic sound – is getting louder. Now the grass is around a meter and a half. The sound is unbearably loud. A soundwave hits. Then – there it is: a mechanical device, camouflaged with grass. A picture was taken, and the grass placed back over the device, so that the hunters wouldn't notice that someone was there before them. “It is better that we don’t leave our fingerprints.”
Over the course of several nights, journalists from Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Netherlands and Italy toured the huge Livanjsko and Duvanjsko fields. They covered 400 kilometers each night by car, stopping at frequently used hunting grounds. You have to be very quiet and put your hands behind your ears to hear the mechanical sound the illicit devices make. Then, it is a matter of walking through the grassfields to find the device.
The team used geo-coordinated maps and charted the hunting grounds and active minefields – left over from the war – on it. In three locations, illegal devices were found. For two nights, the team slept in the car, to be able to return to the field early in the morning where they heard the devices, to apprehend the hunters.
“Illegal hunting has always been here and always will be”
The problem of illegal quail hunting is not new. In Livno, the town where our story starts, it has been present for twenty years, locals tell us. Police spokesman Ivica Vrdoljak explains that there have been around eight cases of illegal hunting using decoys in the last ten years. The biggest problem is finding the evidence that connects offenders to the illegal device.
“You never find a person who is poaching or in some kind of hunting right next to the decoy itself and that he will say ‘it's mine, I put it there’. In most cases, this ends with a misdemeanor report and a misdemeanor order”, says Vrdoljak.
He also confirms that the greatest responsibility rests with the hunting association who holds the concession for the hunting ground. Their obligation is to maintain order in their territory, which also includes preventing poaching.
The hunting ground that the Italians were hunting in, is managed by the hunting association “Livanjsko polje”. The police found the illegal device on their territory, but the president of the association Zdenko Zrno, told us he did not have time for an interview. Two days later, he did not answer our phone call at all. He read a Viber-message but did not respond to it. He also did not answer our calls for the next month. In the end, we called the secretary of the association, Boško Brčić, who claimed he knew nothing about this case.
“I have no information about where those decoys came from”, claimed Boško Brčić. “In fact, I don't even know what that decoy looks like. Anyone can set up those decoys. So, it doesn't necessarily mean that our association set them up, which it didn't. It is impossible for one hunting association to cover 50,000 hectares.”
The owner of the hunting agency Lupo, Ivica Perajica, also did not respond to a request for an interview. Although he claimed to be willing to talk in person, but not over the phone, none of the proposed dates suited him.
In the last ten years, eight cases of poaching with decoy were reported to the police in the area. This is a really small number, say locals and activists who have found evidence of a much wider use of the illicit devices. In two nights alone, our team of journalists found three illegal devices.
The numbers at the disposal of the Municipal court in Livno are even smaller. There are only two cases in their records, in which no one was punished.
Not many cases have actually led to prosecutions, as environmental crime is not always prioritized. Local interests also play a role. Tourism is an important local livelihood in this part of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The economic benefits may therefore often outway the ecological ones.
Unfortunately, the same thing happened in our case. It was inspector Ljuboja who explained us what happened with our case, a few months after finding an illegal device and the two Italians hunting. “They had all the necessary permits,” he wrote shortly, ignoring more detailed questions about the illegal device and the fingerprint that were found on it.
“Exotic market for foreign hunters”
A few weeks later, sitting cross-legged in a meadow pasture near Livno, Goran Topić from the Ornithological Society Our Birds, explains why his country is so popular with Italian hunters.
“Bosnia and Herzegovina is, let’s say an exotic market for foreign hunters because it is characterized by exceptionally preserved, clean, healthy nature with still a large number of birds.”
The area of Livno, a protected Ramsar site, is covered by an alluvial forest, seasonal marshes, pools, streams, kast springs and sinkholes, and is home to the largest peatland in the Balkans. Its unique features make the area a key breeding ground for migratory birds. Total of 279 species live in this area, making it the most bird-rich area in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“Livanjsko polje is the habitat of a large number of rare and endangered species, both at the national and international level”, Topić says, but sadly: “where most birds are, there is most hunting. Thousands of quails are shot in our meadows. As a result we have a decline in the European population. A large number of the European population migrates across the Balkans.”
Topić says that there is a long tradition of bird hunting in Italy. Given that the laws are stricter there, but given the hunters still have a strong desire to hunt, they come to Bosnia and Herzegovina. They are helped by hunting agencies that, on arrival,organize the necessary permits, guns and everything else.
“Every hunting tourism organizer wants to provide his guests with the best possible conditions for hunting, he wants them to leave good reviews, and I guess that's why they resort to luring birds with the help of electric decoys. In just one morning, two hunters can shoot more than 150 quails. In regular hunting, without decoys, it is practically impossible to shoot more than 10 individuals”, says Topić.
There are no official nummers available in Italy or Bosnia and Herzegovina that show how many Italians travel cross the Mediterranean to kill quail every year. Online research confirms that several hunting agencies in Italy advertise hunting trips to Bosnia and Herzegovina and neighbouring countries like Serbia and Croatia.
“With the help of decoys, poaching is also done in Croatia, which is in the EU and in Montenegro, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina. This problem is widespread”, says Topić.
500.000 Italian hunters, but no quails left
Hunting “is culture, passion, skills, knowledge, tastes, feelings”, says Massimo Buconi, the president of Federcaccia, the Italian Hunting Association, which has 225,000 members.
“The dog and the hunter must understand and know each other, live and grow together. They talk to each other, in the context of a unique emotional relationship. The number of hunters is increasing”, he says, and in total there are around 500,000 hunters in Italy.
But there is a problem. The quail is almost gone. There aren't enough individuals to hunt.
“The causes are climate change and agricultural exploitation. The quail has lost its habitat and there are almost none left. I haven't bumped into a quail in years”, says Buconi. He explains that the hunting rules in Italy are strict – people are very limited by different regulations, both in hunting and gun use.
“There are no European countries with regulations as tough as Italy's. The reason is our legislation stems from anti-terrorism regulations. The Italian interest in hunting travels stems from the fact that we suffer from anti-hunting pressure in Italy. So what do you do? You go abroad”, confirms Buconi.
In Italy, environmental organisations and activists are campaigning hard against hunting.
In the 1950’s Italy was a popular hunting ground. Then it was Eastern European countries like Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia which had “less restrictive rules”. But, with entry into the EU, the rules changed. There is interest in the North African countries, Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria, but after the geopolitical events, hunting tourism in those regions has almost stopped. As Buconi says, “there are European nations that are not part of the EU, where there are no EU limits.” He is familiar with the illegal hunting problem in countries in the Western Balkans.
“But they are outside of the EU, have their own regulations that I don't know what they are. I can certainly tell you that it is a very bad practice.”
What he does know is that in Italy, and other countries “there is a ban on the use of acoustic devices of any kind”.
Italian hunters, Puerto Rican nurses and bribes
There are different explanations of what the Italians do with the killed quails. Some claim that cooks of hunting agencies prepare them for eating during their stay in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Others talk about the animals being smuggled back to Italy. Border police officers in Bosnia and Herzegovina tell us that they have found hidden killed quails in cars with Italian plates. In recent years, this has not happened, although they cannot guarantee that the killed quails are not transported by locals and handed over to hunters after the border.
There has been a long tradition of Italian poaching on the Balkan, says Nicola Pierotti, a retired senior inspector of the Italian State Forestry Corps. Now, Pierotti is specialized in investigating bird trafficking, in Italy and abroad, and works with the CABS (Committee Against Bird Slaughter), a German association dedicated to anti-poaching efforts across Europe, and S.O.A.R.D.A. (Anti-Poaching and Animal Crimes Operations Section).
In 2001, Pierotti headed Operation Balkan Birds, an international police operation led by the Italian police, which lasted over a year, and led to the dismantling of two criminal groups smuggling birds. Several countries have been affected by illicit hunting and have been targeted by the investigation: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Romania and Poland.
“It was definitely the biggest investigation at the national level, but I dare say also at the European level. Hundreds of hunters go to Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia and hunt protected species. After that, they are brought home to them. They spend a mountain of money. There are two agencies that have been doing this for years and no one ever sticks their nose in because they are scared, because the people who own these agencies are particular people”, he explains.
After several months of research, the results started to arrive, says Pierotti. They found out that the animals are being smuggled into Italy in vans with two bottoms (red: in the space created between the real and a second fake car bottom). When the officers searched the car, they found nothing. But if they opened the space below the apparent bottom, they would find birds.
Due to increased controls, the smugglers also decided to transport a larger number of birds in a refrigerator truck.
“From there, charges, searches, arrests and jail time for the owners of the two agencies began. But the biggest surprise was finding this refrigerated truck with twelve tons of wildlife on the inside. We are talking about more than 100.000 pipits, which are very small birds of ten to twelve grams. Protected species, of course. But in addition to these, there were so many other protected species, like thousands and thousands of woodcocks. Everything was without medical-veterinary documentation, documentation of provenance, and consequently the truck was then also seized and confiscated. This investigation, then, carried over to final judgment for everyone. There were arrests, there were several months in jail, and eventually there were those who chose to plea bargain and those who chose other proceedings”, he recalls.
The police action gives insight into the behaviour of foreign hunters in the Balkans. They don't just go there to hunt, but also to hire prostitutes and use drugs.
“Through wiretaps, we would hear them talking about the fact that one night “a group of Puerto Rican nurses” would arrive, or another time they would say that after dinner a van would arrive with a dozen young girls. For 100 euros, everyone could choose which one they would spend the night with. We heard poachers discuss brazen activities, from hiring escorts to arranging luxurious entertainment”, describes Pierotti.
Hunting trips from Italy to Bosnia are still happening. According to the data available to the retired inspector from Italy, during September and October 2024, more than 500 Italians traveled to Bosnia for hunting without restrictions.
“Federcaccia [Italy’s national hunting federation] claims these trips are for dog training, but this is false. The trips are about hunting, plain and simple”, says Pierotti. “The hunters bribe local police, who then turn a blind eye to protected species being shot and electrical devices being used.”
Millions birds killed in the Balkan
At least 160,000 quails are killed illegally every year in Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, Albania and Bosnia-Herzegovina. This accounts for 2.5 to 3 percent of the total European population, estimated by the German foundation Euronatur. The once common quail was recently categorised as “potentially endangered” in Europe by the IUCN.
“We are not certain how much of these quails are caught illegally, but estimates say this might be as high as 75%. So there is a massive problem in the Western Balkans, but also in other countries around the Mediterranean basin”, says migratory birds project manager Justine Vansynghel from Euronatur. “Quail populations in Europe are declining”, she adds, and “illegal hunting is contributing to this.”
Quail hunting in south-east Europe is mainly concentrated on two migration routes: along the Adriatic coast and in the plains of northern Serbia. Migratory birds globally are already facing a myriad of threats. The grasslands in which they lay their eggs are often destroyed for agriculture, or by climate change.
“The illegal killing of quails in the Balkans is not just a local problem, but it's a European one”, says Vansynghel, and adds: “these birds are migratory, and they are not staying in one place. So the effect of the birds being caught or trapped and killed in the Western Balkan countries, of course, has also effects on the populations in other countries. In its northern range, the species has become quite rare due to the intensification of agriculture, the population loss caused by illegal killing along the Adriatic migration flyway is another factor that could, in fact, lead to the collapse of the Central European quail populations”, says Vansynghel.
This can have an effect on the wider ecosystem, as quails are eaten by other birds and themselves eat ground dwelling invertebrates. One thing is certain, when the abundance of one species is disrupted, the entire food chain suffers the consequences.
“Overhunting quail certainly impoverishes our nature, our meadows, our grasslands. It affects changes in systems. It ultimately can lead to the complete disappearance of this species from our areas. All global trends show that in the future there will be an additional reduction in the abundance of this species, and that is why it is extremely important that this species is hunted in a legally prescribed manner,” agrees Goran Topić.
“Like the Wild West”
In his office in Novi Sad, the second largest city of Serbia, Milan Ružić, the executive director of the non-governmental organization Society of the Protection and Study of Birds of Serbia, is also worried about the increasing number of foreigners coming to hunt quail.
“It is now estimated that there are already 5 billion fewer birds in Europe than 50 years ago. The entire flight path must be protected and species must be assisted. We are like the Wild West. People who come to hunt quails come here because in their countries such hunting is either prohibited or there is not enough game, not enough quails, and most importantly they come here because they believe laws are not respected here. They will go somewhere they know someone can look after them and they won't be punished. That's the Balkans”, says Ružić, who calls this problem organized crime because “many people in the chain of control know what is happening”.
He emphasizes that birds do not belong to anyone, to any individual or country, because they are animals that travel from one end of the world to the other. They belong to everyone and everyone has an obligation to protect them.
“A quail that someone kills in Serbia is the same quail that someone invested millions of euros in to protect in Slovakia, Hungary, Austria, Poland, Scandinavia or the Baltic states. It is a migratory bird. If some farmers in Latvia or Poland receive subsidies from citizens who are taxpayers of the European Union to keep their meadows or fields clean and beautiful where these quails nest, and they are killed in poaching in Serbia, the whole system falls apart.”
This article was developed with the support of Journalismfund Europe.
