The government this Saturday banned the hunting of the turtledove, a bird whose population has collapsed in Europe, and which had been protected by the Council of State in 2020. “Until July 30, 2022, the hunting of the Turtle Dove (Streptopelia turtur) is suspended throughout the metropolitan territory ”, indicates a decree of the Ministry of Ecological Transition in the Official Journal on Saturday.
This migratory bird has seen its population divided by five in 40 years in Europe, according to scientists.
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) - whose congress is meeting next Friday in Marseille - has placed it on the "red list" of "vulnerable" species.
However, the government had authorized the shooting of 17,460 individuals in August 2020, before the Council of State, the following month, suspended the order.
For the 2021 hunting campaign, the government had already announced in July that it planned to ban all logging.
"Species in agony"
The League for the Protection of Birds (LPO) said it was satisfied.
"It is difficult to see how France could have continued to allow this dying species to be hunted," she wrote in a press release.
But she deplored that "this suspension is not taken for at least five years, the species having no chance of regaining a satisfactory state of conservation in the short and medium term".
The LPO was advancing as well as its observers at the Pointe de Grave, in Gironde, had counted the arrival of less than 4,000 turtledoves in spring 2021, against 44,000 in spring 2004.
As for the National Hunting Federation (FNC), it supports this hunting in the name of the defense of traditional hunts.