John Kevin Bannon
1 de março às 02:27
«One of the advantages of subscribing to British Birds magazine as a Christmas present for my son, is that it’s delivered to my home.
Always a cracking read, the March 2019 issue contains the results of a survey entitled ‘ Bird Hunting in the EU plus Norway and Switzerland’ and refers to 2014/15.
66,214,240 birds were legally slaughtered each year by 6,389,087 registered hunters, an average of 10.39 birds killed by each hunter.
Top Ten Killers based on this survey, with the average kill rate of 10.39 x number of registered hunters, applied to those countries not supplying suitable data, which included the UK & Ireland by the way.
1. France, 17.625 million
2.Spain, 11.933 million
3.UK, 8,304million(see ***)
4. Italy, 6,958 million
5. Cyprus, 3,700 million
6. Ireland, 3,633 million
7. Denmark, 2,062 million
8. Greece, 1,811 million
9. Portugal, 1, 562 million
10. Romania, 1,256 million.
***^The actual number of birds shot in the UK was estimated as 22 million per annum in the late 1990s. However, relatively small numbers of ‘wild birds’ are shot apart from Red Grouse wintering Woodcock, Snipe, Pink-footed and some other geese species.
With only 42,215 registered hunters Cyprus is the most efficient killing machine on the list, with 87.4 birds killed per hunter, plus of course uncontrolled trapping and lime sticks.
The European population of the beautiful Turtle Dove (photo below) is now down to between 1.5 to 4.1 million pairs and yet 1.5 million are still recorded as legally shot each year!
Most birds killed in Northern Europe are ‘legitimate’ game species, especially in the UK and Ireland, Denmark and the Netherlands, where released Pheasant and Partridges are the principal quarry.
However The Finns managed to despatch 136,700 Black Grouse while the French and Maltesers between them some 684,135 Skylarks. Greeks also love to kill Skylarks with up to an estimated 400,000 despatched each year.
That’s chicken feed compared to Italy, Spain and France where between them some 9 million Song Thrushes are eradicated every year (about 3 million each)
The Mediterranean countries concentrate on other ‘approved ‘species such as Turtle Dove, Quail, Skylark and Song Thrush.
Of course good old Malta (aka Island of Dead Birds) weighs in with entirely illegal spring hunting of perhaps 500,000 birds including White Storks, how many carrying babies is not recorded. Other uncontrolled illegal hunting in Cyprus, the Middle East, particularly Egypt and Lebanon adds unknown tens of millions of corpses to the legal totals.
France managed to legally kill 25,199 Pochard out of a wintering population of circa 75,000 in the period and Poland, which has double the average killing rate at 20 plus birds per year, also still kills Pochards and other wildfowl. It’s entirely likely that at least 100 -150 million birds are slaughtered in Europe every year, both legally and illegally, shot, trapped or netted.
Like much of Homo sapiens current activities, how is this sustainable, especially for truly wild species rather than those unfortunates bred to be killed?»
Insustentável, esta mortandade...