Cyprus Tourism Organisation crafting itself a legacy linked to natural resources
Lucrative, illegal and brutal: Millionen Singvögel werden jährlich auf qualvolle Weise getötet. Das Geschäft ist in vielen Ländern zwar illegal - aber es lohnt sich.
The result of complacency, is an unfolding spectacle that reaches your home in full HD color.
"In Zypern ist es besonders schlimm", sagt Alexander Heyd vom Komitee gegen den Vogelmord. Seit über 30 Jahren kämpfen die Mitglieder des spendenfinanzierten Vereins gegen den Vogelmord. Auf ihren Reisen - den so genannten Vogelschutzcamps - versuchen sie, möglichst viele gefangene Tiere zu befreien und Wilderer den Behörden zu melden.
Alexander Heyd from the Komitee against bird slaughter, speaking about organised trips by activists to the island to combat illegal poaching. Such was the spectacle unfolding this past Thursday on german national TV RTL, where up to 4 million German television viewers were able to witness footage of Cypriot bird trappers assaulting a group of conservationists and comes exactly a year after a brutal attack by poachers left several conservationists injured in hospital.
This may be news to some, but sadly it is one of those traditions that seem to perpetuate itself as a menacing spectacle well known to the authorities who apologetically explain that, due to unemployment and lucrative illegal market demand, countless of people get lured by the easy money. For years Birdlife Cyprus, with a group of dedicated wild life enthusiasts, have been reporting and accounting for the devastation. Yes, devastating. How else do you explain 2.5 million birds trapped across the whole of Cyprus in 2010.
Least, is the publicity that culinary Cyprus receives, as I am sure, that natural activist tourism to Cyprus is not going to be a growth sector either. Where is this relentless fury to exhaust populations of migratory birds taking us? Where diminishing of natural habitats already contribute to lower the populations, it seems to all in the interest of the market, the more scarce, the more lucrative and perhaps the more brutal will the spectacle become.
Let us thus summarize the legacy being crafted by the Cyprus Tourism Organisation: as a licensing organisation of restaurant businesses, it enables illegal practices to make it on the menu; as a lease holder of natural woodlands, it's keen to cut down trees to build parking lots on beach front property thereby destroying natural habitats; and as a promoting organisation, it plays a consistent role of neglecting the preservation of natural wildlife thereby inhibiting developments linked to eco-tourism initiatives. Are we missing anything?
More on the RTL TV: Verboten, aber Lukrativ