Habitat management carried out by hunters in the European turtle dove western flyway: Opportunities and pitfalls for linking with sustainable hunting

Abstract

As described in many farmland birds of Europe, habitat loss is one of the main factors explaining the decline of the European turtle dove (Streptopelia turtur), a migratory columbid which breeds in the Western Palaearctic and winters in Africa. In the countries belonging to the western flyway (which host around 40–50% of the European breeding population), the species was hunted before the implementation of a moratorium in recent years, and it is known that habitat management is conducted to favour game and wildlife. Through a questionnaire we investigated the habitat management conducted in hunting grounds of France, Portugal and Spain (931 respondents), and the measures that may favour turtle doves. The vast majority of respondents were totally or partially in charge of game management (98%), but less than 50% were responsible for decisions regarding farming or forestry. The most frequent measures were supplementary food (73% of respondents), water provision (68%), forest management (50%) and agricultural management (47%). Land interventions were conducted in a high proportion of grounds, but at limited scale (<50 ha/hunting ground). In most cases, the management was self-funded by hunters and game managers. Habitat management measures were rarely targeted exclusively to the turtle dove; interventions were, in contrast, frequently part of management targeting various species simultaneously. Grounds with a tradition of higher number of hunted doves were those more likely to target the species in their management. The likelihood of implementing management tools was mainly linked to variations in hunting pressure rather than to perceptions of turtle dove population trends. As the turtle dove is favoured by the ecotone between woodland and farmland, it is crucial to promote and reward measures beyond food and water provision, involving agricultural and forest management, ideally accompanied by species’ monitoring in hunting grounds. As the current Adaptive Harvest Management Framework promoted by the European Union aims to link hunting opportunities with habitat enhancements, hunting grounds could be crucial to improve turtle dove habitats at large scale and help reversing current population trends.