With an average of 500.000 birds illegally killed or taken per year Croatia is a well known IKB hotspot on the Balkan peninsula. Despite common knowledge about the scale and negative consequences of IKB on bird populations, the majority of activities to tackle and curb IKB in Croatia are left to dedicated NGOs with little or no help from official governmental organisations or hunting associations. We would present changes, both positive or negative, achieved from 2016 onwards in order to scale down IKB. These include legislative changes, field efforts on IKB hotspots, lobbying and public awareness raising.

Fight against illegal killing and taking of birds can be divided according to several commonest types of wild bird killing or trapping and consequently, required activities are more or less different. The most common types of wildlife crime which threatens birds in Croatia are: shooting of strictly protected species during otherwise legal hunting including deliberate killing of raptors and careless shooting; poaching of game species using illegal techniques or during non-hunting season; poaching in non-hunting areas; accidental poisoning during illegal poisoning of wild canids; deliberate poisoning and persecution of raptors; and live trapping of songbirds for cage birds. Each type is described and the best experience–based practices how to predict, recognize and tackle in the field are presented. This is a practical knowledge that is often unsystematically shared among bird conservationist that results in slow adaptation of new team members or completely new teams, so more systematic approach and best practice guides are needed.