Greek Bird Lovers Upset Hunting of Endangered European Turtle Dove OK’d

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Greek Bird Lovers Upset Hunting of Endangered European Turtle Dove OK’d

July 22, 2024

Turtle dove Juvenile in Nynäshamn, Sweden. Photo: Wikipedia/Public Domain

A year after Greece’s Environment Ministry instructed local authorities to adopt urgent protection measures to tackle spring poaching against the turtle dove on Ionian islands, it has approved the hunting of the endangered species.

That again drew the ire of the Hellenic Ornithological Society which said the bird has been classified as at risk since 2019 by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

The group said the ministry is catering to hunters and pointed to how Spain and France – like Greece, corridors for the bird’s migratory path – have ensured protections over the previous three years, leading to a recovery of the species.

The ministry set a limit of killing 35,000 of the doves instead of 120,000 with no indications how that could be monitored or enforced in the wild and if there would be officials tracking the hunting.

The group also said that Greece has ignored European Union recommendations for a complete ban and said that allowing even 10 percent of the current numbers to be hunted wouldn’t slow its extinction in the country if the practice continues.

“The Turtle Dove breeding population on the central-eastern flyway continues to decline …the population having nearly halved over the past 20 years. The 10-year trend in this region has worsened from “stable” to “moderate decline,’” said Bird Life International of the trend.

https://www.birdlife.org/news/2024/07/18/a-brighter-future-for-the-european-turtle-dove/

In May, 2023, Deputy Environment Minister Giorgos Amyras sent out the direction against poaching the bird in the Ionian Sea in the spring, when it migrates from Africa to Europe and uses Greek islands there to rest.

“We are putting the emphasis on prevention, creating a strong shield for species threatened by those who break the laws,” Amyras said at the time, two years after the ornithological society called for an ban on hunting the bird in the spring.

The activity, illegal in Greece since 1983, “turns the Ionian Islands into an altar of sacrifice of thousands of exhausted migratory turtle doves,” the society said, adding that spring hunting “constitutes a real crime against turtle doves arriving exhausted and emaciated from their long migrations – a crime victimizing birds coming to Europe to nest.”

Spring poaching is “especially troublesome” in the Ionian Islands, in Western Greece, where, despite the decades-long prohibition, it is still considered a “traditional” activity, it said, and still going on.

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