French Government gives green light for mass Turtle Dove killing
Just five months away from hosting the World Congress of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature in Marseille, France has authorised the killing of nearly 18,000 Turtle Doves – a globally threatened species.
On August 27, 2020, the decree relating to the hunting of the Turtle Dove in metropolitan France during the 2020-2021 season was published in the Official Journal. It sets a maximum quota of 17,460 birds.
Conservation NGOs in Britain, Germany and the Netherlands wrote to the French authorities highlight the massive decline in numbers and to cease the killing – these pleas were ignored.
In 2018 the European Commission asked member states to suspend the hunting Turtle Doves and in July this year an infringement procedure was opened against France yet they decided to allow the killing to continue again this year.
During the 2019-2020 season hunters declared they had "only" killed 4000 doves. The last serious independent estimate, related to the 2013-2014 season and concluded that around 90,000 birds were killed so conservationists in France do not believe the hunters estimates.
This summer during a public consultation 20,000 contributors took part and more than 77% said they were against the continued killing.
Allain Bougrain Dubourg, President of the LPO (Birdlife Partner in France) responding to the news said: “We recently learned of the happy ending of glue trapping, obtained under the threat of a lawsuit against France by the European Commission before the Court of Justice of the European Union. The open offense against France and the fact that it is the only and last country to let such practices take place should have been enough. But no, it was surely necessary to give a new gift to the hunters! Each year, nearly 30,000 Turtle Doves were illegally felled during the breeding season in the Médoc. We fought for 20 years to end this massacre. It is unbearable to keep slaughtering a dying species.”
1 September 2020
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