Hunting regulations as a conservation tool: Hunters' views on the European turtle-dove moratorium

Managing game species suffering population declines demands effective harvest regulation to allow for species recovery. Striking a balance is crucial to ensure that regulations are not perceived as unfair impositions, potentially leading to non-compliance issues. The European turtle-dove (Streptopelia turtur) is a unique example of such conservation conflict, marked by a temporary moratorium of its hunting in the western European countries in 2021, maintained in subsequent years. Exploring the views of turtle-dove hunters is critical for predicting the acceptability of regulatory measures. Here we explored the preferences and perceptions of Spanish hunters regarding policy changes in European turtle-dove hunting. Specifically, we first investigated hunters' views on the current moratorium and then, using a Discrete Choice Experiment (DCE), we assessed their preferences for future management scenarios regarding species recovery and its hunting. The findings revealed heterogeneous perceptions among hunters surveyed about the species' population trends and the procedures to be followed if hunting was reopened in the future (in particular, about who should hunt if small quotas would not allow hunting to occur in all hunting estates), but an overall rejection of the moratorium. The DCE showed that their most favored management option was hunting return in the medium term, and conservation efforts to be carried out across all European and African countries in the migration route. We conclude that transnational cooperative strategies that balance species recovery and science-based hunting regulations are required to achieve a transition to more effective and accepted conservation efforts.