Tag: turtle dove

France green lights mass Turtle Dove killing

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You have to wonder just what it is that hunters have against the European Turtle Dove. At a stretch (‘different times’ and all that) it is possible to perhaps understand the hunting of a once abundant species that appeared in the spring skies and roosted in huge groups just when rural communities needed a plentiful food source, but to still be killing them now? In the 21st Century? When all the data shows that the species is in severe decline (data published in 2016 showed that the UK population of Turtle Doves had declined by 93% since 1994, a trend mirrored across Europe, where there was a decline of 78% between 1980 and 2013)? And no-one can genuinely claim ignorance of that. In 2015 the IUCN upgraded the European Turtle Dove on its Red List from Least Concern to Vulnerable where it remains after a 2019 assessment.

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Turtle Doves | Unsustainable hunting and habitat loss

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It’s not so very long ago that the European Turtle Dove was such a common fixture of the UK summer that almost everyone would have recognised the rolling, purring ‘turr-turr’ call that gave the bird its English name. But, writes Charlie Moores, it’s now the UK’s fastest declining bird species and considered vulnerable to extinction across its entire range.

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