A TOUGHER approach to illegal trapping of the Ortolan bunting has been pledged in France.
The country's Minister of Ecology, Nicolas Hulot, has said he is committed to ending a practice in which victims are trapped, blinded, plumpened and drowned in brandy before being served in restaurants or sold in shops as a “delicacy”.
Custom demands that the diner wears a napkin over the head in the belief that rich aromas are not lost while the dish - bones and all - is being chewed.
The bird was said to have been the last dish of former French president Francois Mitterand.
Around 30,000 Ortolan buntings are captured - either in nets or on glue-smeared twigs and branches - every autumn as they migrate through France from eastern Europe to West Africa.
The practice, which is particularly widespread in the Landes region of South-west France, also claims collateral victims such as many finch and warbler species.
The Ortolans are blinded and kept in cages where they are force-fed on millet seed to fatten them.
Technically, the activity has been illegal for the past 18 years, but authorities have tended to disregard the breaches on the grounds that it is a long-established cultural tradition.
In December 2016, the European Commission announced that it was taking France to the EU Court of Justice for failing to address violations of the EU’s Birds Directive - with a potential fine running into millions of euros.
In response, M. Hulot put out a statement in August in which he stated his intention to put an end to the poaching of Ortolan buntings in the Landes region.
“Preserving biodiversity is essential to the future of our humanity. Protection of a natural heritage is a legacy we must pass on to future generations.
"The practice of poaching Ortolans is illegal, it must stop….it poses a significant risk to the survival of a species whose future is threatened by climate change and urbanisation which destroys its habitat."
The announcement has been welcomed by bird conservation groups in France and Bird Life International, but it remains to be seen how effectively any prospective legislation is enforced.
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