But behind this European rebound lies a more contrasting reality: in France, the population is still not increasing significantly. The case of the tufted duck, also subject to public consultation, fuels the same scientific controversy.
Wood Pigeon: The Ministry of Ecological Transition Cites Improvement in European Indicators
The Ministry of Ecological Transition opened, from July 30 to August 19, 2026, two public consultations concerning the hunting of the wood pigeon and the tufted duck for the 2026-2027 season. In both cases, the State intends to maintain what is called adaptive management: harvests remain authorized but under a national cap and with a mandatory declaration designed to enable near real-time monitoring.
For the wood pigeon, the project is particularly sensitive. After several seasons of moratorium followed by a return to hunting in 2025-2026, the government proposes not only to renew the harvests but also to raise the ceiling. This decision is based on a real improvement in European indicators. At the French level, however, the scientific data are far less reassuring.
Wood Pigeon: A Decree Raises the Hunting Quota
The draft decree calls for a maximum of 12,000 wood pigeons for the 2026-2027 season, according to the Ministry of Ecological Transition. In the previous season, France had a ceiling of 10,560 birds, as stated in the opinion of the Expert Committee on Adaptive Management (CEGA), validated on July 17, 2026. The increase thus amounts to 1,440 additional birds, or about 13.6%, calculated from the two official ceilings.
In practice, the previous ceiling had not been reached. During the 2025-2026 season, 7,483 wood pigeons were harvested and reported, i.e., 71% of the 10,560-bird quota, according to CEGA. The proposed scheme for the next season would reuse the same oversight principle: every harvested bird would have to be immediately declared in the ChassAdapt app, while the National Federation of Hunters would transmit the data daily to the French Office for Biodiversity and to the ministry, according to the decree draft. Once the national ceiling is reached, new declarations would be blocked and any further shooting would become illegal.
This mechanism is defended by hunting organizations. The Gironde Departmental Federation of Hunters highlights digital declaration, checks, and data collection on age, sex, or distribution of birds as means to better understand populations. On August 10, 2026, the federation urged its members to support the project during the public consultation. Hunters of the East echoed a comparable position as of August 6, 2026.
The issue, however, is not limited to how ChassAdapt operates. The central question is the geographic level at which the status of the wood pigeon should be assessed. It is precisely on this point that scientific conclusions become far less straightforward than the government’s project presentation suggests.
Why Does the Ministry of Ecological Transition Want to Renew Hunting?
The government’s reasoning rests first on the evolution of the western migratory corridor as a whole. After the European moratorium established in 2021, three conditions had been defined before considering a resumption of harvests: an increase in population for at least two consecutive years, an improvement in survival over the same period, and the existence of sufficiently robust systems to monitor harvests, according to CEGA in its July 17, 2026 opinion.
These indicators have indeed improved. The Western European population is estimated to have reached 2.12 million breeding pairs in 2025, with an average growth of 9.6% per year since the moratorium and 46.6% between 2021 and 2025, according to data from the Task Force on the Recovery of Birds cited by CEGA. Survival rates measured in banded French and Iberian birds have also risen: about 10% for adults and 42% for juveniles, again according to CEGA’s scientific assessment.
It is on this dynamic that the European mechanism rests. When hunting resumed, a harvest level equivalent to 1.5% of the total population of the Western migratory flyway had been set and then distributed among the States according to their historical quotas, CEGA notes. In this logic, the committee considers that the 12,000 birds allocated to France for 2026-2027 could appear compatible with sustainable hunting across the whole Western European population.
The ministry repeats this argument in its consultation and highlights the better conservation status observed on the central-west migratory route. Advocates of hunting also stress this scale. The Gironde Hunters’ Federation argues that the European quota and scientific monitoring allow reconciling conservation with hunting activity, while the specialized media Chasse Passion presents maintaining controlled ceilings as France’s choice of adaptive management rather than a blanket ban.
Wood Pigeon: French Populations Still Fragile
The problem becomes apparent when the analysis moves from the European scale to the birds actually eligible to be shot in France. CEGA itself concedes that a broad migratory pathway approach can be reductive. According to its analysis, nearly 95% of the birds likely to be exposed to hunting in France within the studied framework come from the French population, making its own trend particularly important.
Yet this population has not rebounded to the same extent as the Iberian population. Between 2021 and 2025, the abundance of French nesting wood pigeons reportedly varied by only 3%, a non-significant change whose confidence interval ranges from -6% to +13%, according to STOC data from the National Museum of Natural History analyzed by CEGA. The committee thus speaks of stabilization, not proven growth. Over the long term, the prognosis is bleaker: LPO reports, based on MNHN trends, a French decline of more than 50% prior to the recent stabilization.
The geographic contrast is stark. The 46.6% rebound measured across the entire Western flyway since 2021 is largely attributed to Iberian dynamics, CEGA notes. The committee also notes that, in the historical distribution examined, about 81% of harvests were carried out in Spain, 10% in Portugal, and 8% in France, according to European scientific work cited in its opinion. In other words, stopping shooting did not produce the same demographic effects everywhere, and the Spanish rebound does not automatically mean that northern-nesting birds have reached a satisfactory status.
That is why CEGA offers an essential caveat. At the migratory flyway scale, the 12,000 French harvests may appear sustainable. But for birds nesting or actually migrating through France, the committee believes that current knowledge does not allow proving that this ceiling will not affect population stability. LPO relies on precisely this distinction to judge the restart premature, while ASPAS calls for a moratorium, at least on females.
The vulnerability of the species is not limited to shooting. CEGA reminds that the 2021 national management plan has yet to yield the implementation of conservation and habitat restoration measures. Agricultural intensification, urbanization, and climate change continue to weigh on breeding habitats, the committee notes. LPO adds the disappearance of hedgerows and the degradation of agricultural habitats among persistent factors. For experts, truly adaptive management cannot be limited to yearly changes in the number of birds eligible for hunting.
Tufted Duck: a Declining Species Despite Renewed Quota
The second public consultation concerns the tufted duck, a diving duck whose situation remains a concern. Under the ministry’s draft decree, the government proposes to maintain a ceiling of 5,000 harvests in metropolitan France for the 2026-2027 season. Male harvesting should be prioritized, but harvesting females is not prohibited.
Demographic data explain why this nuance is far from secondary. On the northwestern European migratory route, the wintering tufted ducks declined by about 36% between 2006 and 2023, although a stabilization appears over the most recent decade. In France, a recent survey estimates the breeding population at 15,626 nesting pairs, with an uncertainty range of 10,622 to 20,630 pairs, according to data cited by the same committee.
The survival of young females is one of the critical points. It is estimated at only 16% to 25% in the work mobilized by CEGA, which sees improving this survival as the most effective short-term lever to grow the population. The Task Force on the Recovery of Birds therefore recommends either a complete moratorium on hunting or, failing that, a ban on harvesting females, according to CEGA. France’s project does not go that far: it only recommends prioritizing males.
The experience of the previous season illustrates the difficulty. Despite prioritizing males, females still accounted for 38% of tufted ducks harvested in France in 2025-2026, compared with about 42% in earlier hunting records analyzed, CEGA notes. The committee therefore considers that France’s 2025-2026 modalities are not, as they stand, in line with the latest European scientific recommendations. LPO and ASPAS use the same argument to call for a moratorium, at least on females.
The monitoring itself must still be strengthened. In 2025, only 32% of tufted duck declarations harvested via ChassAdapt were accompanied by an usable photograph, a rate CEGA deems insufficient. The committee calls for more photographs, a reduction in the use of paper logbooks, and better quantification of field controls. The decree draft, for its part, provides for a consolidated assessment of harvests before April 1, 2027, and a scientific evaluation submitted to the administration before June 1, 2027.
Should Hunting Remain Authorized When a National Population Shows No Significant Recovery?
