European study finds hunting not a primary cause of bird population decline

A large-scale scientific study conducted across nine European countries has analyzed the relationship between hunting and bird population declines. Led by researcher Eva de la Peña and published in Global Ecology and Conservation, the study examined 992 observations across 256 bird species.

The research aimed to determine if legal huntability—defined by a species' inclusion in Annex II of the Birds Directive—or hunting interest, measured by annual bag sizes, correlated with a higher probability of population decline. The findings suggest that hunting is not the primary cause of large-scale bird population declines, challenging ideological arguments that link hunting directly to species loss.