Latest news with #OperationTurtleDove
Yahoo
05-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Experts celebrate stunning success after banning hunting for one threatened species: 'Excellent news'
When it comes to conservation efforts, a cool epithet can only help. Operation Turtle Dove not only has a fantastic name, but it has also been a smashing success. A ban on hunting turtle doves in western Europe was introduced in 2021. In just four years, the region's population has recovered by 40%. Senior project manager for Operation Turtle Dove Rick Bayne told the Independent, "This excellent news from the wider western European breeding population is compelling evidence that our conservation strategy for turtle doves is working." The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) describes the turtle dove as a "dainty dove." Though their plumage is dark and resembles a tortoiseshell, their name actually comes from their distinctive, "turr turr" call. These gentle creatures have long been a cultural symbol of love and devotion in Western culture. They mate for life, and the male takes an active role in incubating eggs. As granivores, they play a useful role in the ecosystem as seed dispersers, which helps maintain biodiversity in the region. Turtle doves wisely avoid British winters by spending the time in Africa before migrating through western Europe in the summer months. But their numbers have plummeted dramatically, by around 98% (per the Woodland Trust) from 1970s levels. The chief causes were changes to agriculture that deprived them of food sources, and overhunting. Millions of birds en route to southeast England were trapped and shot by hunters in France, Spain, and Portugal before the hunting ban. Operation Turtle Dove works with farmers and landowners in Britain to help create habitats that enable turtle doves to thrive once again. This collaborative approach has been a cornerstone of the project's success. Nature is resilient, and conservation efforts worldwide demonstrate that endangered species can recover from the brink if they're given the chance. Of course, it's important not to get complacent, especially with the news that the European Union will lift the hunting ban on turtle doves. Should the government be allowed to restrict how much water we use? Definitely Only during major droughts No way I'm not sure Click your choice to see results and speak your mind. Dr. Guy Anderson, the RSPB's Migratory Birds Programme manager, explained that Operation Turtle Dove's success "does not diminish the need to ensure that unsustainable levels of hunting do not return." Join our free newsletter for good news and useful tips, and don't miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.
Telegraph
03-04-2025
- General
- Telegraph
Britain's birds are dying – here's what we'll lose
The poet Ted Hughes once memorably described the challenge facing any writer in describing an airborne crow. There are no words, he argued, to 'capture the infinite depth of crowiness in a crow's flight'. No phrase, no matter how well-chosen, could begin to do justice to the bird. Or, as Hughes bluntly put it, 'a bookload of such descriptions is immediately rubbish when you look up and see the crow flying'. It's a cautionary tale to which few modern-day nature writers seem willing to pay heed. As sure as the swallows arriving each spring, there'll come a fresh wave of books attempting to capture birds' essence. Given the sheer proliferation of these avian volumes, in fact, one can't help but wonder whether they're intended to test, rather than convey, Britain's enduring love affair with birds. Jon Gower's Birdland (★★☆☆☆) shows the perils of navigating this increasingly congested field. Gower, it's fair to say, is no arriviste to ornithology. As a teenager in the 1970s, he would regularly escape his claustrophobic family home in south Wales, cycling through old ash pits and marshes to lose himself in birdwatching. This book thus represents something of a culmination of that lifelong love affair: it sees Gower travel across Britain in pursuit of species from urban peregrines to the great bustards of Salisbury Plain. You can't fault his dedication. Studying corncrakes on the Hebridean isle of Coll, he finds himself furiously pedalling his rented bike to keep up with a group of eminent ornithologists in a Land Rover. Each chapter is interspersed with interviews with conservationists attempting to protect Britain's birds against a backdrop of decades of decline. Yet his paths feel too well trodden. The case studies he highlights will be familiar to anyone with more than a passing interest in Britain's birds: the RSPB's Operation Turtle Dove, the kittiwakes on Newcastle's Quayside, Oxford 's Wytham Woods – famously one of the most studied tracts of woodland in the world – and, nearby, the swift colony on the roof of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. Gower abridges these stories into individual, loosely connected chapters, and in the process he offers little more than a bird's-eye view. Oddly, at the same time, his research gets lost in the thickets of modern-day nature writing, meaning there is little here that feels original. At one stage, he recounts the highlights of a Robert Macfarlane Twitter thread about JA Baker's classic 1967 book The Peregrine; we're thus presented with the curious spectacle of one author writing about another author tweeting about another author who was writing on birds. And as for the Ted Hughes test, a wren is described as a 'miniaturised, soft machine-gun spraying paper bullets of sound', and choughs as flying like 'an aerial clown-show'. At one stage, Gower even coins his own collective noun: a 'serenity of swans'. (There are already several words: flock, bevy, gaggle, herd.) For all his admirable passion, one can't help but wonder whether he might leave birdland to the birds for a while. In Bird School (★★★★☆), Adam Nicolson seems more alert to the challenges, and perils, of his field. Early on, he cites the writer Charles Foster's claim that whenever he, Foster, is perusing the 'birdwatching' section of a bookshop, he'll seek out the titles that describe the experience of having birds watch us, rather than the other way around. And, instead of striking out in pursuit of birds, Nicolson instead constructs a hide in a field close to his home on the Sussex Weald. What follows is in part a deep topography of a local patch, and in part an exploration of the intricacies of the lives of the birds that reside there. The result is deeply satisfying. 'We do not know each other and their lives are invisible to us,' Nicolson writes of the birds he watches. Instead of attempting to capture the unknowable, he draws upon an impressive depth of scientific and historical research to bring his subjects to life. Bird School works, to a degree, like a scrapbook, with Nicolson including old maps and notes – he records the exact sequence of birds singing in the dawn chorus – as well as a diary of the time he spends in the hide. He only loses focus when, on occasion, he ventures too far afield, as when he wanders the streets of Bonn in pursuit of blackbird song. When he stays put, Bird School is a worthy addition to a literary lineage that stretches back to the 18th-century writer and naturalist Gilbert White. Above all, Nicolson's dispassionate style is effective at illustrating the threat to Britain's birds. At one point he produces a series of graphs demonstrating the precipitous collapse of our songbird population over the past 60 years: bullfinches, nightingales and swallows have declined by 50 per cent, skylarks by 60 per cent and turtle doves by 90 per cent. The roll-call of species lost, he writes, reads like a list of regiments decimated in battle. Across Europe as a whole, bird populations have fallen by nearly a fifth over recent decades, a loss of about 600 million birds from a total of 3.2 billion in 1980. That collective indifference to what he calls an 'ending of a multiple form of life' inspired him to write this book. Bird School, then, is a fitting title: we should learn to rekindle our enduring love affair with birds, before they vanish from our sight.
The Independent
28-03-2025
- General
- The Independent
Turtle dove hunting ban boosts western European population by 40%
Numbers of threatened turtle doves in western Europe have rapidly recovered after a hunting ban was introduced in 2021, conservationists said. Numbers in the region increased by 40% to 610,000 breeding pairs from 2021 to 2024, according to Pan-European Common Bird Monitoring Data Scheme figures released on Friday. The rising numbers provide hope for the future of the birds, currently on the red list of threatened species in the UK. The birds migrate from Africa each year to breed in European countries including the UK. While famously featuring in Christmas carol The 12 Days Of Christmas, turtle doves are actually only found in the UK over the summer months. France, Spain and Portugal paused hunting of the species in 2021 to allow their recovery. Prior to 2018 an 'unsustainable' one million turtle doves were being hunted each autumn in those three countries alone, the RSPB said. But the species also needs good breeding season habitats – a key issue for the UK where changes to the way land was farmed in the 20th century deprived them of much of their seed food. As part of Operation Turtle Dove, UK conservation groups are working with farmers and landowners to provide key habitats including seed-rich flowering areas, ponds, patches of thorny scrub and tall, wide hedgerows to support the birds. It comes as an international team of scientists, including from the RSPB, have been advising governments on how to manage their populations of turtle doves sustainably, and whose advice led to the temporary hunting ban. The moratorium is the first stage of a hunting management system, developed to ensure that any future hunting is carried out at sustainable levels that allow the population to continue to recover in the long term. On the new figures, Rick Bayne, senior project manager for Operation Turtle Dove, said: 'This excellent news from the wider western European breeding population is compelling evidence that our conservation strategy for turtle doves is working, making the work of Operation Turtle Dove to deliver good breeding habitat for these birds all the more important here in the UK.' But Dr Guy Anderson, the RSPB's Migratory Birds Programme manager, said: 'This good news for the whole western European breeding population of turtle doves does not diminish the need to ensure that unsustainable levels of hunting do not return, but it can and should strengthen our resolve to ensure that more of the UK's countryside is 'turtle dove ready'. 'We know that nature recovery, for turtle doves and other much-loved farmland wildlife, will not be possible without farmers and other land managers, and the efforts of those involved in Operation Turtle Dove so far have been amazing in installing the necessary habitat features to aid their breeding success when they reach our shores again this spring.' Operation Turtle Dove is a partnership between the RSPB, Natural England, Pensthorpe Conservation Trust and Fair To Nature.
Yahoo
28-03-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Turtle dove hunting ban boosts western European population by 40%
Numbers of threatened turtle doves in western Europe have rapidly recovered after a hunting ban was introduced in 2021, conservationists said. Numbers in the region increased by 40% to 610,000 breeding pairs from 2021 to 2024, according to Pan-European Common Bird Monitoring Data Scheme figures released on Friday. The rising numbers provide hope for the future of the birds, currently on the red list of threatened species in the UK. The birds migrate from Africa each year to breed in European countries including the UK. While famously featuring in Christmas carol The 12 Days Of Christmas, turtle doves are actually only found in the UK over the summer months. France, Spain and Portugal paused hunting of the species in 2021 to allow their recovery. Prior to 2018 an 'unsustainable' one million turtle doves were being hunted each autumn in those three countries alone, the RSPB said. But the species also needs good breeding season habitats – a key issue for the UK where changes to the way land was farmed in the 20th century deprived them of much of their seed food. As part of Operation Turtle Dove, UK conservation groups are working with farmers and landowners to provide key habitats including seed-rich flowering areas, ponds, patches of thorny scrub and tall, wide hedgerows to support the birds. It comes as an international team of scientists, including from the RSPB, have been advising governments on how to manage their populations of turtle doves sustainably, and whose advice led to the temporary hunting ban. The moratorium is the first stage of a hunting management system, developed to ensure that any future hunting is carried out at sustainable levels that allow the population to continue to recover in the long term. On the new figures, Rick Bayne, senior project manager for Operation Turtle Dove, said: 'This excellent news from the wider western European breeding population is compelling evidence that our conservation strategy for turtle doves is working, making the work of Operation Turtle Dove to deliver good breeding habitat for these birds all the more important here in the UK.' But Dr Guy Anderson, the RSPB's Migratory Birds Programme manager, said: 'This good news for the whole western European breeding population of turtle doves does not diminish the need to ensure that unsustainable levels of hunting do not return, but it can and should strengthen our resolve to ensure that more of the UK's countryside is 'turtle dove ready'. 'We know that nature recovery, for turtle doves and other much-loved farmland wildlife, will not be possible without farmers and other land managers, and the efforts of those involved in Operation Turtle Dove so far have been amazing in installing the necessary habitat features to aid their breeding success when they reach our shores again this spring.' Operation Turtle Dove is a partnership between the RSPB, Natural England, Pensthorpe Conservation Trust and Fair To Nature.
