Limitations of current policy in Spanish hunting for the conservation of European-Turtle dove

Halting the decline of European turtle doves (Streptopelia turtur) is a great challenge in conservation and sustainable management in the XXI century. The turtle dove is a migrant bird having suffered a severe decline in... [ view full abstract ]

Halting the decline of European turtle doves (Streptopelia turtur) is a great challenge in conservation and sustainable management in the XXI century. The turtle dove is a migrant bird having suffered a severe decline in recent decades, specially marked in the western part of Europe. The birds that use the western flyway to reach the wintering grounds in Africa are susceptible to be hunted in Spain, the country where the greatest amount of turtle doves are hunted within Europe (>900.000 birds shot each year). Additionally, recent analyses suggest that current hunting levels are unsustainable for the species. For this reason, policies regulating the hunting of this species in Spain are especially relevant for the conservation of the species and for sustainable hunting management. Overall, turtle doves may be hunted in Spain from 15 August to end of September. However, hunting policies in Spain are decided at the regional level, so each region can modify general regulations, e.g. determining the start or end date of the hunting season, and the number of hunting days within a week, for each province within the region. Therefore, total number of hunting days in a year, or how many of these hunting days are earlier in the summer, varied across regions and across years for the same region. Since 2007, additionally, various regions have implemented stricter regulations (e.g. implementing daily quotas per hunter) in response to the population declines. We analyzed the effectiveness of hunting policy in reducing the number of turtle dove captures. We used generalized linear mixed models (GLMMs) to compare provincial hunting bags each year (from 2007 to 2015) in relation to the number of hunting days in the hunting season, the number of hunting weekends in August, and before and after the implementation of a daily quota. For this analysis we used the more up-to-date and complete information of annual turtle dove captures per province. We show not significant differences in captures in relation to modifications of the start date of the hunting season, or total number of hunting days. Additionally, no significant differences were found between before and after applying daily quotas per hunter. Our results suggests that none of the hunting policy changes implemented so far seem to reduce the number of turtle dove hunted. The reason for this inefficiency could be that the measures are inadequate for the management of the hunting of this species, or that they have not been implemented adequately, e.g. ensuring the compliance of the regulation. These results are crucial in the context of this species, due to the importance of finding suitable policy changes to regulate hunting and that promote sustainable hunting and conservation of the species, and highlight that it is important to look for better governance to allow the coexistence of hunting and conservation goals.