A group of poachers in Androlykou illegally hunts hares on an almost nightly basis despite repeatedly being reported, the head of the Game and Fauna Service, Pantelis Hadjiyerou, told the House environment committee on Tuesday.

“They poach hares every night. We report them, but they simply don’t care,” Hadjiyerou said.

He stressed that more drastic measures were needed against professional poachers who treat fines as “merely the cost of doing business”.

Hadjiyerou told MPs that revenue from poaching now exceeds €10 million a year, confirming estimates put forward by environmental organisations.

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He said the Game and Fauna Service should be given the power to revoke offenders’ firearms or driving licences, arguing that financial penalties alone were failing to deter repeat offenders.

Akel MP Nikos Kettiros illustrated the scale of the problem by referring to a poacher in Larnaca who had been reported seven times in a single year.

The first six complaints produced a combined fine of €13,500, which the poacher paid in cash before offending again within a week.

“Some people are getting rich and such fines do nothing, the authorities should find a way to be effective.”

Deputy police chief Michalis Katsounotos acknowledged that poachers frequently avoid paying extrajudicial fines, forcing cases into court, where penalties tend to be smaller and can be settled in instalments.

He said police action against poaching had been less intensive this year because of competing demands linked to the Cyprus EU Council presidency and foot-and-mouth disease patrols.

The committee also heard renewed complaints from chairman and Elam MP Linos Papayiannis over the conduct of activists from the group committee against bird slaughter (CABS), who they said had harassed legal hunters and property owners on multiple occasions.

He recalled an incident in Episkopi where British bases police allegedly declined to record a complaint because the activists involved were “very well connected”.

Katsounotos said he could not dispute the claims but would need to examine the specific cases.

Environmental organisations represented at the session, including Terra Cypria, BirdLife Cyprus, rejected the framing of the debate, arguing that it risked collectively targeting activists rather than addressing poaching itself.

BirdLife Cyprus representative Melpo Apostolidou said her organisation had submitted some 79 reports to the police over the past three years, resulting in 25 criminal prosecutions, and estimated that 726,000 birds are trapped illegally in Cyprus annually.

Disy MP Andreas Constantinou proposed freezing the assets of those involved in large-scale trafficking.

Papayiannis said he had passed information on one activist organisation to state services and would continue pressing the matter, while stressing that his concerns applied to a specific group rather than environmental organisations as a whole.