Experts alarmed as EU lifts ban on shooting vulnerable dove species

Hunters will be allowed to shoot turtle doves for sport again across Europe, as the EU lifts a ban that was credited with the species' tentative recovery.

- Helena Horton Ajit Niranjan

The EU will permit the shooting of 132,000 birds in the wake of a population boom that followed the imposition of a hunting ban in 2021.

The pigeon species is on the brink of extinction in the UK, where it is the fastest declining bird. Globally, the bird is classed as vulnerable to extinction because of hunting and habitat loss.

Every year the birds, which mate for life, fly from sub-Saharan Africa across Europe to breed in northern Europe in summer, and in some countries, such as Spain and Italy, they are shot for sport during their migration.

But following a temporary ban three years ago on the annual shoot of the birds as they migrate, there was a remarkable 25% increase in its western European population, which includes 2,000 of the doves in England.