Paris (AFP)
Hunters will kill 18,000 turtledoves in the 2019-2020 season, a species classified "vulnerable", according to a decree published Saturday in the Official Journal, five times less than the number hunted so far.
"For the 2019-2020 hunting season, more than 18,000 turtle doves can not be harvested for the entire metropolitan territory", according to the decree of the Ministry for Ecological Transition.
"Before this decree, no quota was set, which led to an estimated harvest of 92,000 birds per year," said the ministry in a statement. These birds are classified as "vulnerable" in France and Europe by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
The government is also planning measures to "protect and restore habitats" and to invite its neighbors via the European Commission to take similar measures because the turtledove is a migratory species. "In Spain (...) hunters collect more than 800,000 per year," the statement said.
The turtledove is one of three species of birds for which the Department has put in place adaptive management of species. The number of animals that can be killed is determined after scientific expertise on the state of conservation of each species.
For the turtledove, a scientific committee recommended not to hunt more, while the population has dropped 80% in Europe in the last 40 years, or, at worst, to kill 1.3% of the estimated workforce in France, or 18,300 birds. The draft ministerial decree initially planned to kill 30,000.
For the Curlew, the ministry had set a quota of 6,000 animals that could be killed during the hunting season, when scientists recommended a moratorium. The State Council, seized by the League of Birds Protection (LPO), suspended the ministerial decree a few days ago, provoking the anger of the hunters.
A third order renewed the suspension of black-tailed barge hunting.
Emmanuel Macron is very criticized in the camp ecologist for his measures favorable to the hunters. When he slammed the door of the government at the end of August 2018, the former minister of ecological transition Nicolas Hulot had criticized the weight of lobbies, including hunters.
© 2019 AFP