1 Million Migrating Songbirds are Killed for Pickled Dish in Cyprus

[Liberal_in_LA]

1 Million Migrating Songbirds are Killed for Pickled Dish in Cyprus

:puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke:



Every year trappers in Cyprus kill millions of migrating songbirds that are boiled or pickled – a national delicacy called ambelopoulia. Wildlife conservationists want authorities there to do more to prevent this “ecological disaster.”

One songbird is illegally trapped or killed every four seconds to provide residents of Cyprus with ingredients for a dish called ambelopoulia, according to Wildlife Extra. Quoting Tim Stowe, the Royal Society for the Protection of Bird’s (RSPB) international director, the online wildlife news publication reports that this mass slaughter takes place twice every year despite European, Cypriot, and Sovereign Base Area law that prohibits either trapping or killing wild birds.

Often not far from popular tourist destinations, trappers use mist nets and lime sticks to catch mostly whitethroats and blackcaps. They then sell the birds to restaurants, where they are either boiled or pickled. Since the beginning of September, this fate has befallen more than one million songbirds on their annual migration between Europe and Africa.

BirdLife Cyprus has been monitoring the situation in Cyprus since the annual bird-trapping season started in September. They are in the process of gathering signatures in order to pressure local ministers to step up their efforts to cull this banned practice.

http://www.greenprophet.com/2011/10/1-million-migrating-songbirds-are-killed-for-pickled-dish-in-cyprus/

[snagglepuss]

1. How can people do that? Songbirds? It's absolutely disgusting.

Cypriots aren't starving. Effing lowlifes.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

2. EW!!! That's revolting!!! Makes me want to puke! I really try to eat little or no meat

It's hard but the very idea of eating meat in general makes me queasy.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

3. Which part, Free Cyprus or the portion illegally occupied by Turkey?

[snagglepuss]

8. I had the same question. According to one site I found, more is known about

the Greek practice but efforts are underway to determine how prevelant this is in occupied region.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

10. Clearly free Cyprus is more open that the Turkish occupied portion

[XemaSab]

4. It's a huge environmental issue in Europe

:(

[Liberal_in_LA]

5. 1st I've ever heard of it. I thought just cats were the problem.

[cui bono]

7. Well it's easier than rounding up 1 million cats plus it takes a lot less space to pickle them.

[Recursion]

25. That's less than one pickled bird (or cat) per Cypriot. Also, the number is down from 10 million

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/07/26/100726fa_fact_franzen

This is a success story.

[Recursion]

6. 1 million out of a population of...?

There are plenty of species where a harvest of 1,000,000 doesn't even show up as a blip.

[Ikonoklast]

9. Songbird species are in decline worldwide. ALL songbird species.

Your argument was the same used with Passenger Pigeons.

[Recursion]

20. Actually nobody even asked about passenger pigeons. 9 billion chickens are eaten in the US yearly

But our husbandry rate allows a harvest that large.

So, I'm asking, is this a harvest consistent with maintaining the songbird population or not? If it's not, something really needs to be done to stop this.

[flvegan]

13. (facepalm)

[Recursion]

14. Nope

A harvest of one million out of a population of one billion is not a problem. So what was the original songbird population?

[flvegan]

15. Project much?

You even stipulate that you have no idea what the original population is/was. Good for you.

Harvest. Indeed.

[Recursion]

21. Yes, indeed. Harvest. That's what it's called.

Of course I stipulated that I don't know what the population is; I rarely ask questions to which I know the answer.

There are populations that can take an annual harvest of 1 million. In the US (a much larger area, obviously) 6 million white-tailed deer, 50 million doves, and 30 million squirrels are harvested annually; none of those populations are in danger from hunting (some are, in fact, only managed by hunting).

[XemaSab]

17. If you moved to a city where 1 out of every 1,000 residents

was murdered every year, would that look like a big number to you?

[Recursion]

19. It would depend on the normal predation rate

If 20 out of 1000 were being eaten by hawks, I probably wouldn't notice it.

Something like 9 billion chickens are eaten in the US every year, to give it some scale.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

37. song birds = humans ???

just sayin'

[KamaAina]

42. New Orleans is actually close to that

140 murders this year through mid-September, out of an estimated population of 350,000. :scared:

[TwilightGardener]

11. Sick. What a waste.

[Recursion]

26. How is killing animals for food a waste? Just killing them is a waste.

What's wasteful about killing an animal and eating it? Particularly in a situation like this where pretty much the entire animal gets used.

[TwilightGardener]

30. Idiotic. This isn't food in any real sense, unless you're a cat or a hawk.

But you knew that.

[Xithras]

40. How is it any different than dove or pigeon hunting?

Plenty of people hunt both for food here in the U.S. Small game hunting is still fairly common in rural areas of America.

[closeupready]

41. Or the East Asian custom of eating boiled fertilized duck eggs, known as balut?

Same basic concept.

[TwilightGardener]

43. Songbirds aren't meat. Let's not pretend they are. And no, I wouldn't be a fan

of dove and pigeon hunting, especially if their habitat is disappearing and their numbers are in decline. I don't think they're being hunted for meat so much as sport. I have quail in my yard everyday, and while they are sometimes hunted for game, I wouldn't do it--they are losing their natural range and nesting cover, they also get hit by cars. Edit to add: in fact, I have spent considerable time, effort, and money planting shrubs and grasses for quail cover and food in my yard.

[Recursion]

48. They've been a traditional food for thousands of years. "Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie"

You seriously never heard of that? Gadsby's Tavern in old town Alexandria VA still serves lark pie from time to time.

[TwilightGardener]

51. Come on, now.

[Recursion]

52. What? People have eaten songbirds for millenia

They were popular in the US until we got all suburban.

[tabatha]

12. There is a sad reflection on the education of people worldwide.

[lonestarnot]

16. So they want to eat everything. When it's all gone, they will be eating each other and you and me.

[minavasht]

18. If they have been doing it for many years

without apparent adverse effect on the bird's population I guess it is not an ecological disaster.

[AngryAmish]

22. What are the pickling spices?

[LeftinOH]

23. Why do some foreigners keep the heads on the animals they eat? Stop it.

Still, history has shown (right here in the US) that a seemingly enormous wild bird population hunted for food can be driven to extinction.

[closeupready]

24. So what. Americans are so silly and squeamish, like teenagers.

Other people eat things we aren't accustomed to. If this is leading to songbird scarcity, fine, condemn it, but if not, get over it.

[Codeine]

27. Agreed.

The environmental impact is the real issue, but people are really up in arms because they're "songbirds", and thus less appropriate to eat than chickens or turkeys because. . . well, just because, I guess. :eyes: I can't stand it when meat-eaters condemn other people for eating animals.

[TwilightGardener]

29. It's not silly and squeamish. They're taking a living creature that has value as

a part of nature's beauty and ecosystem, AND has no value as meat (or apparently flavor, seeing as they have to pickle it), and shoving it down the gullet only to shit it out the next day--pointless destruction of nature. This is reminiscent of ivory and egret feathers, and shark fins. What's next for the people of Cyprus, candied butterfly wings?

[Rebubula]

31. It would appear...

...that the people of this region disagree with your OPINION that it has no meat value.

Seriously - how is this different than Cornish Game Hen or Oysters?

You are being ethnocentric. Period.

[TwilightGardener]

36. We farm and/or manage oysters, and I'd say they do provide nutritional value.

We domesticate and farm game hens and poultry for meat. Because even though they're small, they do have meat--one can feed a person. This isn't about eating small things--it isn't about hunting for meat, either. This is wanton, arrogant destruction of nature--why? BECAUSE WE CAN. There is no conceivable food value in a little wild songbird. If that makes me "ethnocentric", I'm fine with that.

[callous taoboy]

45. Bingo again, Twilight.

[TwilightGardener]

46. We know history, and yet we're still doomed to repeat it--pointlessly, in this case.

[Recursion]

49. People have eaten songbirds for a long time. Seriously. There's even a famous nursery rhyme about it

Have you really never heard of that?

[closeupready]

33. Whether it's songbirds or potatoes, it all comes out as shit, so that argument is irrelevant.

Shitting is actually not pointless. It serves a vital function for both us critters and also the environment. At any rate:

Furthermore, you have never tasted a songbird, so you can not say that it has no value in terms of flavor, nor no value in terms of a source of fowl. As a matter of fact, one reason (among several) why the aforementioned passenger pigeons went extinct was because their flesh was pleasant-tasting in contrast to other birds. Consider the taste/texture difference between duck and turkey - one fatty and distinctly flavored, the other dry and bland.

As I said before, if it could be shown that this cull threatened the species, then yes, it should be condemned. However, as someone else pointed out, 1M is actually down from 10M/year which was the cull during the 90's.

[callous taoboy]

35. Krimmeny. You mention an extinct species, wiped out by human

desire for its taste, and then say they may be in the right for eating song birds.

:crazy:

[closeupready]

38. Getting tired of repeating myself - please pay attention! As I said, IF it can be shown

that this cull is threatening the species, fine, condemn it.

If, on the other hand, the population is exploding - as with, for example, coyotes, deer, Canadian geese - then no, I'm fine with it. Even if the population is stable, I'd be essentially fine with it as long as populations are being monitored.

Do I need to repeat that disclaimer a third or fourth time, or is that clear?

[callous taoboy]

44. Why do you suppose it's being called an "ecological disaster?"

Look what happened to the passenger pigeon you mentioned.

[Recursion]

50. Not sure, since it's down to 10% of the level it was at a decade ago

Annual harvests in the 1990s were in the tens of millions range, not the million range, because the government started pushing conservation. Good for them. I just don't get why hunting this particular animal is so appalling to you.

[callous taoboy]

34. Agreed, Twilight. May they switch to "pickled Cyprus human cock.".

[closeupready]

39. That would be cannibalism, and that's illegal. Hunting fowl, however, is not.

nt

[Recursion]

28. This is great news. It used to be 10 million.

Cyprus has apparently gone to great lengths to curb the trapping of birds, and has reduced the harvest to 10% of what it was a decade ago.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/07/26/100726fa_fact_franzen

[joeybee12]

32. Bastards...haul them off to prison...knr

[madokie]

47. All this time I thought it was wind turbines that killed all them birds

guess one can't believe everything he reads in the E/E forum, huh