The quail hunting season has begun, including in many Balkan countries. Illegal methods, such as decoys, are often used. The high numbers of birds shot poses a major threat to these increasingly rare birds.
The quail (Coturnix coturnix) is the only long-distance migrant among European gallinaceous birds (the family of chickens, turkeys etc.). Thousands used to be seen migrating along the coasts of the Mediterranean, but today there are far fewer.
© Karin Herr
Quail hunting range: The mass shooting of quail is a huge loss for this endangered species. In Germany, the quail enjoys a year-round closed season.
© Milan Ružić
In many Balkan countries, quails are attracted on their migration route with sound lures like these. It is a perfidious and illegal hunting method.
© PPNEA
Quail hunting in south-east Europe is mainly concentrated on two migration routes: along the Adriatic coast and in the plains of northern Serbia. As monitoring is not standardised in the individual countries and is carried out more intensively along the migration routes in particular, there may be a certain bias in the representation.
© BiomRadolfzell. It is estimated that at least 160,000 quails are killed illegally every year in Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, Albania and Bosnia-Herzegovina. The same illegal method is often used for hunting: the poachers place sound lures in meadows and fields at night to attract the flocks of quail, migrating to their wintering grounds in Africa. The birds, about the size of a common blackbird, are tricked by the lure calls of their species, settling down in the darkness. Then, at sunrise the poachers shoot the birds by the thousands. In this way, they kill far more quails using illegal sound lures than by legal methods.
EuroNatur and its partner organisations in the Balkans are campaigning for an end to illegal quail hunting and have now published an up-to-date map showing where in these countries quails are demonstrably being shot using illegal methods. The density is particularly high in Serbia. "Poaching sites are mostly recurring. As soon as we discover a decoy, we can come back practically every week and report the decoys," says Sandra Jovanović from the EuroNatur partner organisation BPSSS (Serbia). “Nevertheless, the illegal killing of quails in Serbia has actually increased over the past two years, which may be due to better prevention in Croatia. There has been a decline in illegal hunting there.”
"The illegal killing of quails in the Balkans is not just a local problem, but a European one," said Dr Justine Vansynghel, project manager for migratory bird conservation at the international nature conservation foundation EuroNatur. "The species has become rare in its northern range due to the intensification of agriculture. The population loss caused by illegal killing along the Adriatic migration route is another factor that could lead to the collapse of Central European quail populations," says the biologist.
"The illegal killing of quails using tape recorders is mainly carried out by hunting tourism agencies and hunting societies that organise quail hunting for foreign hunters. They often openly advertise that they offer their clients unlimited hunting opportunities," says Tibor Mikuska from the Croatian Society for Bird and Nature Protection (HDZPP). "Moreover, the mere possession and trade in lures is not illegal and is openly advertised on online shops. This makes it difficult to effectively remove such illegally installed devices in the field."
Together with its partner organisations in the Balkans, EuroNatur is demanding that:
- the hunting community adopt zero tolerance towards illegal killing and report sound lures to the relevant authorities,
- that law enforcement authorities in the countries take consistent action against the illegal killing of birds, and
- that the judiciary impose appropriate penalties on poachers.
Background information:
- Every year, around 160,000 quails are illegally killed during the autumn migration in the Western Balkans, accounting for around 2.5 to 3 per cent of the total European population. This is one of the reasons why the once common quail was recently categorised as "potentially endangered" by the IUCN.
- For ethical reasons and because of their negative impact on biodiversity, electronic lures (also known as tape decoys, tape recorders or callers) are banned in most parts of the world. In many Balkan countries, the use of these lures is also prohibited, but not their possession. This illegal method of luring birds with electronic callers is still widespread in southern Europe.
- More about EuroNatur's bird conservation projects you can find here.
Rückfragen:
Christian Stielow, EuroNatur, christian.stielow(at)euronatur.org, Tel.: +49 (0)7732 – 92 72 15
Tibor Mikuska, HDZPP, Tel. +385 95 909 87 53
Bolesław Słociński, Biom, boleslaw.slocinski@biom.hr