Conservationists voice concern over new hunting season
ANTALYA - Demirören News Agency
Nature associations and bird watchers have criticized the Central Hunting Commission’s decision that some 29 bird species will be on the list of hunters in the new hunting season, which will start on Aug. 20.
Refuting the claims that hunting is done to balance the populations, Gökçe Coşkun, a bird watcher in the southern province of Antalya, said, “These are put forward in order to base the hunting on a scientific basis but there is very little data on the populations of the species that exist in the wildlife.”
It is completely out of date to take a gun and try to kill wild animals without any work as it is necessary to monitor the species in a region for years, to reveal the threats, to eliminate them and to provide interspecies relations, according to Coşkun.
Even animals that are in the “vulnerable” category on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s “red list of threatened species,” such as pochard and turtle dove, are allowed to be hunted, Coşkun added. “Magpie, crocus and even coyote are on this list. There is no study showing the overpopulation of these species across the country or describing their damage.”
“If we don’t correct these mistakes, we will gradually lose our country’s wildlife. We need to recognize them not as game, but as living creatures like us,” she added.
She also criticized that a picture of Anatolian leopard, which was displayed in the camera traps launched when it was thought to be extinct in the country, was used on the documents prepared by the Nature Conservation and National Parks (DKMP) for hunters.
Cem Altıparmak, the lawyer of a nature association, reiterated the lawsuit they filed at the Council of State for the annulment of a similar decision given during the last year’s hunting season and that this lawsuit is still ongoing.
Noting that thousands of birds are killed uncontrollably in a single hunting season, Altıparmak said, “It is not possible to explain the killing of a living species just for the purpose of killing it as sport, tradition or a culture.”
There is no justification for land hunting, which is the most damaging activity to biodiversity worldwide, he added.
Underlining the importance of birds in terms of the ecosystems’ balance, Erol Kesici, the science consultant of another nature association, noted that the number of at least 40 percent of bird species, nearly 4,000, have decreased significantly on a global scale.
Kesici said that 28 of 491 bird species in Türkiye are endangered at the national and global level, including swans, geese and ducks.
“We have to take the decisions on hunting very carefully because it is almost impossible to return,” said Kesici, indicating that hunting causes the rapid extinction of birds.
