The Animal Party on Saturday excoriated ornithological non-governmental organisation BirdLife Cyprus for not attending a protest organised against Elam’s decision to table a discussion on “environmental activists and the phenomena surrounding them” at Wednesday’s House environment committee meeting.

“Before the peaceful protest organised by our party outside parliament on September 16, our party leader Kyriacos Kyriacou contacted a representative of BirdLife Cyprus to discuss the organisation’s participation. We were informed that a decision had been made for the organisation not to participate in the protest,” it said.

It added that the reasons offered by BirdLife Cyprus were “primarily … concerns regarding the impact on its public image and, especially, the expected turnout”.

“We are therefore obliged to publicly ask: since when is the defence of the environment, wildlife and those fighting against poaching measured in numbers?” it asked.

It added that “even more importantly, when 18 civil society organisations sign a joint letter to parliament regarding this specific issue, what message is conveyed when the organisation specifically mandated to protect wild birds chooses not to stand with them outside parliament?”.

“The issue takes on even greater significance because BirdLife made public its umbrage over the fact it was not invited to the environment committee meeting,” it said.

It said that while “we understand and respect every organisation’s right to decide its own course of action”, the public “also has the right to know the choices made by any entity when such a serious matter concerns nature conservation, the protection of wild birds and the fight against poaching”.

Game service chief says hunters are being ‘terrorised’

“Our position is clear: we cannot ask for our voice to be heard inside parliament while simultaneously being absent when the public is outside parliament defending environmental activism,” it said.

It added that “we cannot allow the discussion, which was initially to be focused on poaching and illegal bird trapping, to shift into a debate on how to restrict or control those who identify and report those illegal acts and assist the competent authorities in addressing them”.

At Wednesday’s committee session, Akel MP Yiorgos Loukaides accused committee chairman and Elam MP of deliberately targeting environmental organisations, saying, “you put the organisations in the dock, but you do not allow them to defend themselves”.

Later during the same session, game service chief Pantelis Hadjiyerou said that legal hunters were being “terrorised” by activists.

Earlier in the week, Papayiannis had said that activist groups had gone “beyond the limits of what is tolerable and permissible”, adding, “when a group of people foregoes order, the police, the game service, they are violating the law”.