May 23, 2019 - Daily Times

Illegal hunting threatens songbird prized as delicacy: study

Every year, nearly five million breeding pairs of ortolan buntings — a type of tiny songbird classified as endangered in several countries — migrate from Europe to Africa for the winter.

About 300,000 of the birds pass through southwestern France, where they fall prey to hunters who for decades have defied bans on harvesting them in the name of gastronomic tradition.

“If hunting of the ortolan continues, it will lead to the ortolan’s disappearance,” Frederic Jiguet, a professor at France’s national museum of natural history and the study’s main author, told AFP.

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