Unlike those who flood the web with alarmist announcements, without any operational proposal to solve the problems of hunting, we believe that it is necessary to work and inform in a different way, aiming at the concreteness of the achievable results. Recently, the Ministry of Ecological Transition issued a note to the Regions, to MIPAAF and to ISPRA, which highlighted the intention to reach a "moratorium" for the collection of the species in the absence of an agreement between the Regions on Turtle dove management plan (Streptopelia turtur). In these hours the question seems destined to find a positive outcome.
The Councilor for the Environment of the Sardinia Piras region would be working on a proposal shared with the various regional realities to allow the collection of the Tortora in pre-opening, with a specific limit to the days and the daily and seasonal game bag. The times for this process are very tight (by March 30), but the conditions for achieving a positive result are certainly at hand. The Tuscany region is also developing a role on the subject focused on the need to reach a unitary result to allow the coordination of the Environment Commission to express a clear position on the management plan of the Tortora to be communicated both to the MITE and to the Presidency of the Cabinet. From the Regional Department of Agro-food, hunting and fishing we are informed that this initiative concerning the taking of the Tortora and the related management plan sees Tuscany committed to obtaining a shared and responsible position.
We have already taken steps to favor an agreement that can guarantee the collection of the Tortora in pre-opening without compromising the aspects of conservation and proper management of the species". Also on the technical and scientific level there are all the prerequisites to avoid an incomprehensible "moratorium" which is not justifiable also given the conservation status of the species at European level. Indeed the Tortora has been studied for years with some national monitoring programs of the populations that joined the International Plan under discussion within the European Commission.
The plan, inspired by the study by Marx et al., 2016, divided the overall European area into three sub-populations. According to this scheme there are three for the Tortora "Flyways", the western one, the central one and the eastern one. The Flyways in which Italy is inserted present the most favorable conditions, therefore there are no justified alarmisms for hunting in our country. Furthermore, in Italy the MITO 2000 Project is the most important breeding bird population monitoring program; the national result for the wild turtledove that emerges from the project is of a stable population which demonstrates how the hunting collection over the years has not negatively influenced the demography of the Italian reproductive population.