projectpowerplant.com

solonavi 20 September 2007 Endangered & Extinction 333 views No Comment Print This Post  Email This Post

AP

On the world’s list of weird foods, ortolan – a bite-size songbird roasted and gulped down whole – can claim a place of distinction. It’s an illegal place, though, since the ortolan is a protected species and hunting it is banned in France. Now the government is out to get poachers of the coveted fowl.

:

According to tradition, the French shroud their head in a napkin to eat ortolan: Tucking into the bite-sized bird – which is killed by being drowned in Armagnac, plucked and roasted with its yellow skin and skeleton intact – can be a messy business. It’s also an illicit one.

A 1998 law banned hunting the ortolan, a copper-breasted bird that migrates from Africa to Europe, because of its endangered status. Ortolan hunters – who trap the birds alive and keep them in cages for several weeks to fatten them up – face fines of up to $12,460 and six months in prison, if caught and convicted. But environmentalists complain the law is rarely enforced.

Earlier this month, the minister in charge of the environment, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, pledged to step up inspections of the ortolan’s habitat in the Landes region in southwestern France. The increased inspections have already born fruit, she said.

:

Environmentalists blame the poaching on continued demand for roasted ortolan – which aficionados say is satisfyingly crunchy, with a subtle hazelnut taste.

:

..hunters kill as many as 30,000 ortolans each year in France alone, contributing to an estimated 30 percent decline in their numbers over the past decade.

The League says there are an estimated 600,000 to 750,000 ortolan pairs in Europe, including 23,000 in France. Those that are caught are mostly migrating between eastern Europe and Africa, it says.

The European Union includes the ortolan on a list of birds that require special protection measures to ensure their survival. That means they cannot be captured or killed. The rule applies across the 27-member EU.

:

In the meantime, Kosciusko-Morizet is hoping people will lay off ortolans and turn their attention to other, legal French delicacies instead.

===================================================================================

The Ortolan, or Ortolan Bunting, Emberiza hortulana, is a bird in the bunting family Emberizidae, a passerine family now separated by most modern authors from the finches, Fringillidae. The bird’s common name is French, from the Latin hortulanus, the gardener bird, (from hortus, a garden).

The Ortolan is 16 cm in length and weighs 20 to 25 grams. In appearance and habits it much resembles its congener the Yellowhammer, but lacks the bright colouring of that species; the Ortolan’s head, for instance, is greenish-grey, instead of a bright yellow. The somewhat monotonous song of the cock resembles that of the Yellowhammer.

The species is in decline in at least ten European countries, although the total population is estimated in 400,000-600,000 pairs.

In France it disappeared from 17 départements between 1960 and 1980, and numbers have fallen in another seven départements. The 1992 estimation for the French population is 15,000 pairs.

The reasons proposed for this strong regression are habitat degradation, reduction of nesting places, and changes in the agricultural landscape. Hunting (in particular in Landes) is responsible for taking about 50,000 birds per year (ten times the Ortolan population of Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands).

It is a protected species in Europe and its sale is illegal in France, but Gascons still catch it by the end of summer to fatten it. This practice is politically sensitive and one of the reasons for the regional success of parties like that of Hunters and Fishers.