Turtle Doves and a French Farce 30th August 2020

The pair of Turtle Doves at Otmoor RSPB

The RSPB's Otmoor Reserve, here in Oxfordshire where I live, is now about the only place in the county where one can hope to have a reasonable chance of seeing a Turtle Dove, a species that in former times was common throughout southern England, breeding in scrubland and mature hedgerows, serenading the summer air with its gentle purring song but is now very rare and rapidly heading for extinction as a breeding bird in England.

It is inevitable that with the downward national trend, the Turtle Doves at Otmoor have similarly declined  and now are reduced  to one pair and, as far as I know, they have been unsuccesful in raising any young this year, just as in the previous year. It will surely not be long before Otmoor will be bereft of Turtle Doves.

This year I was fortunate enough to see the male at Otmoor, purring his song from a dead branch, high in a tree by the car park. The soft soothing rhythm of its song the perfect adjunct to the benificence of the sunny summer morning in which I stood.

A few days later I was even more fortunate to see male and female together at the cattle pens where supplemental seed is put down to attract and sustain them. First the male flew in and sat for a while on a wooden post and then, after a short spell of preening and wing stretching, flew down to the ground to feed, with some Moorhens and Stock Doves for company. 

Some minutes later a second Turtle Dove landed on the pens wooden railings, prompting the one on the ground to fly up to join it. By their behaviour it was obvious they were a pair, for they sidled up close and commenced preening each other's neck feathers. This is a common behaviour in the dove and pigeon family, that serves to strengthen and re-affirm their pair bond. The sight of these two together raised hopes that maybe this year they would manage to breed here successfully. Sadly I now know it was not to be.

Turtle Doves are migratory, coming to breed in Europe from their winter home in sub saharan Africa  and are welcomed in Spring by just about everyone in England. Sadly such a benign attitude towards them does not exist around the Mediterranean and the southern European countries that they have to pass through on their migrations. Here they are still mercilessly hunted both legally and illegally,

With their population in virtual free fall in Europe you would think that all the countries in Europe would seek to protect them in an effort to reverse this dreadful situation. The European Commission asked all its member states in 2018 to cease hunting this species but this has been ignored by the French Government and their latest action, sanctionng further hunting of this dove, is in my opinion an outrage.

Step forward Barbara Pompeli, Minister of Ecological Transition in the French Government who presented a decree in July 2020, now approved by the French Government, authorising the killing by French 'hunters' of 17,460 Turtle Doves on their migration through France this autumn. I would call this stupidity but it is not. What it represents is a blatant pandering to the hunting lobby in France because votes mean more to ambitious politicians like Pompeli and her cronies than any concerns about protecting an endangered species  for which they are ultimately responsible. 

How on earth Pompeli came to the precise figure of 17,640 is beyond comprehension and even more pertinent just who is going to monitor the number of doves killed this autumn and call stop when the limit is reached? Everyone knows this will not happen and the figure quoted above will be far exceeded.

By way of example, in the year 2013 no less than 90,000 Turtle Doves were killed in the autumn which suggests any controls and checks on the number of doves to be massacred this year in France is for the fairies. Further evidence of the lack of accountability on the part of the hunters can be seen by the fact that to date. each year 30,000 Turtle Doves are illegally killed during the breeding season in the Medoc region of France, let alone those that are killed, supposedly lawfully, on their autumn migration. The French Government are aware of these facts but do nothing about it and indeed, with this latest decree have compounded an already appalling and unsustainable situation.

Formal letters from conservation NGO's (Non Governmental Organisations) in Britain and Germany, where Turtle Dove populations have fallen drastically, were sent to the French Government and  during a public consultation about the latest decree to kill Turtle Doves in France this autumn, a poll of 20,000 of the  French public resulted in 77% voting against Pompeli's proposal. The letters and the poll were, as with everyone else who raised an objection, ignored.

The Government also made sure, by approving the decree just one day before it commenced, that it was impossible for the Ligue pour la Protection des Oiseaux (LPO) in France and other conservation organisations to contest it before the hunting season opened. This was mendacious on the part of Pompeli and the French Government as they knew full well that this allowed 10-15 days before any decision to reverse the decree  by the French Council of State could come into force, so whatever happens there will be open season on the doves for at least two weeks this autumn come what may.

Similar underhand tactics were employed by the French Government in 2019 in regard to hunting Eurasian Curlews, another dramatically declining species, although thankfully the decree to hunt them was overturned by the Council of State.

Let's hope that the Council of State decides to recind this latest disgraceful decree sanctioning autumn hunting of Turtle Doves in France and Pompeli, together with the rest of the French Government, are shamed into reversing this disgraceful decision to kill yet more Turtle Doves for no other reason than so called sport and appeasing the hunting lobby in France.

I feel such a sense of impotence and despair about the continued abuse of power and abdication of responsibility by politicians (and I include Britain) entrusted to care for and protect wildlife, who feel immune to any accountability and are more intent on personal career progression rather than show care and concern for biodiversity in their respective countries 

Never has there been a greater need for us and those who we elect to govern, to understand the wonder that is our planet and the need, now more urgent than ever to protect the rich biodiversity of flora and fauna that share this, our only world, with us.

Some Good News

The French Council of State, the highest administrative court in France, following representations from LPO have overturned the Government decree to shoot 17,500 Turtle Doves this autumn. Sadly it did not take effect until the 23rd August by which time a minimum of 6,500 doves and possibly as many as 10,000 had been shot. This ban only applies to the 2020-2021 season but it is to be hoped that common sense will over-ride political ambition and the ban will be maintained for the foreseable future.