Sale of ptarmigan will be banned and the ptarmigan hunting season will be substantially shortened announced minister of the environment Sigrídur Anna Thódardóttir yesterday.
The hunting season starts the 15th of October and lasts until the 30th of November. When the hunting of ptarmigan was last allowed two years ago, the season ended on the 22nd of December.
Icelandic Institute for Natural History estimates the sustainable catch of ptarmigan at 70,000 birds, and the changes are being implemented with the objective that less than 70,000 birds will be hunted .
Morgunbladid reports that parallel to these tactics a special PR campaign on moderate hunting will be conducted.
Sigríður said it was important to decrease hunting, and first and foremost to stop large volume hunting. Large volume hunting has constituted half of all ptarmigan caught in Iceland in recent years. 5.000 people hunt ptarmigan in Iceland and 10% of those hunt about one half of all ptarmigan.
In the two years since it was decided to ban ptarmigan hunting the size of the stock has increased threefold.
