OC Aviary UK embarks on similar FKNK turtle dove project

The turtle dove (Streptopelia turtur), Malta’s chief game bird, has always been a protected species in the UK, meaning it cannot be hunted. Yet, although it was once a familiar sight in the British countryside, its population has declined drastically in recent years. Since 1995, the breeding population has fallen by 98%, and some sources say it has declined by 99% since 1960.

Habitat loss has been identified as the main cause of this decline, and some progress has been made through habitat restoration projects. However, OC Aviary, a young but experienced UK captive bird breeding organisation, believes that habitat restoration alone will not increase the turtle dove population (see above Facebook post).

Therefore, in collaboration with Keep It Wild CIC and supported by the Turtle Dove Trust and Turtle Doves SW, OC Aviary has been trialling the breeding of turtle doves since spring 2025. This operation is set to increase in scale ahead of spring 2027, with the aim of providing birds for reintroduction at sites across the UK. In the meantime, OC Aviary is also experimenting with breeding other birds in captivity for eventual reintroduction into the wild, namely the twite and the northern lapwing.

The UK turtle dove operation is very similar to the Turtle Dove Captive-breeding for Release into the Wild project launched by the Federation for Hunting and Conservation – Malta (FKNK) in 2017. Since then, the project has achieved its main objectives of providing a compensatory measure and increasing the population, as well as revealing interesting migration patterns through satellite tracking. The Maltese public has provided wonderful support for the project in general (see link).

Both the UK operation and the FKNK project have proven that released captive-bred birds live alongside wild birds and, most importantly, migrate when the time comes.

Of course, BirdLife Malta and their allies, especially the RSPB, are now expected to criticise both operations, saying that they are not scientific (which they definitely are), that the released birds can transmit diseases (which has never been proven), that they do not follow the IUCN's respective guidelines (which they strictly do), and that the turtle dove is still in danger of extinction. Anyone was welcome to observe the thousands upon thousands of turtle doves that migrated over the Maltese Islands on the morning of 15 September 2026 — a phenomenon that hasn't been witnessed for around 40 years.