Ever since the announcement of the date of the referendum which should decide whether the 10-day traditional, socio-cultural passion of spring hunting of turtle dove and quail should be abolished or otherwise, several manipulated and misleading articles about the local conservation status of turtle dove have been published in the local newspapers and are being circulated in social media. The writers of these articles are basing their arguments on the conservation status of the turtle dove in the UK. The facts about the bird’s conservation status locally are as follows:

In their 2012 study The Facts about Maltese Game-Shooting and Live-Bird Capturing, A.E. Zammit and L.C. Farrugia, summarised the presence of the migratory turtle dove species in the Maltese islands as follows: “The bird is commonly to be seen in April and May, appearing in considerable numbers on one or two days. It is seen singly, in pairs, or in small flocks of three to 10 birds, sometimes more. ...Often, especially if it appears over Malta and Gozo after the sun has risen, it will not interrupt its flight, but continues flying high over the land without alighting to take advantage of the favourable weather conditions.

“The turtle dove usually arrives on our shores at night, although migration during the daylight hours is often the case. During its short late-summer migration it is occasionally seen in very small numbers mostly on the west coast of our islands.”

It is an undisputed fact that the Maltese islands do not lie on any of the major Mediterranean bird migration routes. Zammit and Farrugia explain that the three major routes across the Mediterranean Sea are the west flyway, from west Africa to the Iberian peninsula, the central flyway – the closest to the Maltese islands – from central Africa to the Italian peninsula, and the east flyway, from east Africa to the European mainland.

The authors further explain the two types of migration: narrow-fronted and broad-fronted. Quoting R.E. Moreau’s 1953 study ‘Migration in the Mediterranean area’ and C. Thomaidis’s 2010 ‘Study of the Migration Patterns of Turtle Dove (Streptopilia turtur) and Quail (Coturnix coturnix) over the Maltese Islands’, they say that since the turtle dove is a broad-fronted migrant, its migration pattern is definitely not on the major Mediterranean central flyway because the birds that use this flyway depart from Cap Bon in Tunisia, and invariably head northeast. Since the Maltese archipelago lies about 250 kilometres away and in the southeast, Malta cannot be considered as being on the central Mediterranean migration route.

Furthermore, understandably, migrating birds will try to avoid wide stretches of water and thus prefer to cross between the closest points of dry land. The direction of birds’ migration over the Maltese islands heads northeasterly in the spring and vice-versa in autumn. Thus, an insignificant number of migrating birds pass over the Maltese islands either from the north or south.

In fact, the Wild Birds Regulation Unit (WBRU) stated in 2014 that according to A. Raine’s 2007 study ‘The international impact of hunting and trapping in the Maltese islands’ published by Birdlife Malta, Malta has “no records of ring recoveries pertaining to turtle doves that originated from the UK”.

While it is true that the turtle dove population is in decline in some European countries, particularly in the UK, the decline is not attributed to hunting. Meanwhile in other European countries like France, which has the highest number of registered hunters, the turtle dove has registered a steady increase, according to Zammit and Farrugia. In fact, in their 2004 Bird Study, S.J. Browne and N.J. Aebischer, cited in the 2006 study by A.J. Loveridge, J.C. Reynolds and E.J. Milner-Gulland, ‘Does sport hunting benefit conservation?’, found that “the observed decline in UK breeding turtle doves could be entirely explained by changed UK farming practices with no direct evidence for a damaging impact of hunting”.

Aebischer, a world-renowned authority regarding turtle dove in the UK, was commissioned by the Maltese government in early 2010 to estimate the small number of turtle doves and quails that may be harvested in the spring hunting season. Eventually, the government came up with the maximum national figures of 11,000 turtle doves and 5,000 quails that may be taken in spring as a result of the inverse-proportion formula devised. The actual figures harvested, according to official sources, in the spring of 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014, add up to less than one-fourth of the established maximum bag limits.

In 2014, the WBRU stated that “BirdLife International [2004] suggests that the European turtle dove population is very large [over 3.5 million pairs]”. This is roughly 10,500,000 individuals. Therefore, if Malta’s maximum national bag-limit for turtle dove were to be reached, this would be 0.1 per cent of this amount, which is well below the one per cent criteria established by the ‘Guidance document on hunting under the Birds Directive’.

This document, which was published by the European Commission in 2004 and updated in 2008, is a result of the Sustainable Hunting Initiative that the Commission had established in 2001 with the cooperation of Birdlife International and the Federation of Associations for Hunting and Conservation of the EU (Face).

Article 3.5.34 of the document states: “In order to determine an exact figure for the threshold, two approaches are possible:

“The figure must be much lower, by at least an order of size, than those figures characteristic of the taking of birds under Article 7. A figure of one per cent meets this condition.

An insignificant number of migrating birds pass over the Maltese islands either from the north or south

“The taking must have a negligible effect on the population dynamics of the species concerned. A figure of one per cent or less meets this condition as the parameters of population dynamics are seldom known to within less than one percentage point, and bird taking amounting to less than one per cent can be ignored from a mathematical point of view in model studies.”

Returning to the situation of turtle doves in the UK, in the 2013 report ‘Pesticides to blame for UK’s declining turtle dove population’, EcoWatch Transforming Green wrote: “The dove has experienced major population decline in England over the past 20 years, due in significant part to the destruction of turtle dove habitat and food sources from increasing herbicide use in English agriculture.”

In its 2014 report, the WBRU states that the turtle dove has been “red-listed in the UK in view of its breeding decline... .In May 2012, ‘Operation Turtle Dove’ was launched jointly by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and a number of partners, including Natural England.

“The project’s website (http://operationturtle dove.org/) asserts that the main causal factor leading to the decline of this species in England is pesticide use [and subsequent lack of suitable food] exacerbated by habitat loss.

“This assertion is echoed by several contributors to the subject and online articles ... . The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds also maintains that the reduction in nesting attempts ‘...has been associated with a reduction in available weed seeds on farmland and a dietary switch from weed seeds to cereals over the same time period’.

“Conversely, in its species factsheet, BirdLife International attributes this decline to ongoing habitat destruction... as specified in the project’s website, ‘[we] have little knowledge of turtle dove migration routes, and virtually no data on population connectivity and wintering ecology’.”

These factors, which have caused the turtle dove’s decline in the UK, have been likewise accredited by the 2003 study by Browne and Aebischer, ‘Habitat use, foraging ecology and diet of turtle doves in Britain’, the 2004 study by Browne and Aebischer ‘Temporal changes in the breeding ecology of European turtle doves in Britain, and implications for conservation’, and the 2012 study by J.C. Dunn and A.J. Morris, ‘Which features of UK farmland are important in retaining territories of the rapidly declining turtle dove?, Bird Study iFirst.

If the coalition wins the referendum it would have governed instead of the elected government

Furthermore, Dunn and Morris attributed the habitat and territory loss factor to the presence of the abundant woodpigeon in the UK. It should be added that woodpigeon (Columba palumbus) is classified as a pest in the UK and it can be hunted on a 24/7 basis throughout the year, obviously, including spring.

The 2014 WBRU report also states: “It should also be noted that the analysis of available scientific literature performed in February 2014 did not result in any significant new scientific insight pertaining to the conservation status of turtle dove and quail over the past year, that is, since the assessment of available scientific data on the conservation status of these two species was undertaken in 2013...” and “there are no scientific indications that the potential application of a spring hunting derogation in Malta in 2014 could in any way threaten the maintenance of the global, European or EU populations of either quail or turtle dove at a satisfactory level.”

The report concludes: “The WBRU considers that the above-mentioned scientific literature does not indicate any significant changes in the population trends and in the conservation status of quail and turtle dove which would require a re-assessment of the conclusions reached by the Court of Justice of the European Union in its judgment of September 10, 2009.”

Prior to Malta’s membership of EU, the European Commission’s ‘Common Position’ (CONF-M 110/02) stated: “The EU takes note of Malta’s statement that it will limit the taking in spring to only two species (turtle dove and quail) as an application of the derogation.”

In the case of the Commission vs Malta (C-76/08), on September 10, 2009, the European Court of Justice (ECJ), having established that “on the basis of its finding, that the crucial pre-condition for derogations, namely, the absence of an alternative satisfactory solution, was met”, confirmed that spring hunting of turtle dove and the quail may be permitted. This decision was later acknowledged by EU Environment Commissioner Janez Potocik in 2010 in answers given to questions put in the European Parliament.

The judgment stated: “Having regard to those very specific circumstances, hunting for quails and turtle doves during autumn hunting season cannot be regarded as constituting, in Malta, another satisfactory solution, so that the condition that there be no other satisfactory solution, laid down in Article 9(1) of the directive, should, in principle, be considered met.”

A day prior to the ECJ’s verdict, Birdlife International and Face signed an agreement wherein they stated: “In advance of the ruling of the ECJ in case C-76/08 on spring hunting of turtle dove and common quail in Malta, we the undersigned state that we will respect the ruling of the court and we call upon all parties and individuals to do the same.”

Birdlife Malta never respected the ruling of the ECJ, the highest EU institution, and to add insult to injury, they have joined forces with the coalition that wants to abolish the 10-day spring hunting season.

This coalition is led by Malta’s green political party, which in the 30 years of its existence has never managed to elect a member to the Maltese Parliament. Thus, if the coalition wins the forthcoming referendum it would have beaten the two political parties in the Parliament, and moreover would have governed instead of the elected government.