Most countries that pledged to reduce the number of birds being illegally killed along an important migratory route in Europe and the Mediterranean region are failing to do so, a new report shows.

For the report, conservation organizations BirdLife International and EuroNatur tracked the progress of 46 countries in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, which have committed to the Rome Strategic Plan (RSP), a 10-year goal to halve the illegal killing, taking and trade of wild birds by 2030 compared to 2020. RSP was jointly developed by members of the Bern Convention, an international treaty for wildlife conservation in Europe and parts of Africa, and an intergovernmental task force of the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS MIKT).

Five years into the plan, the report found that 38 of the 46 countries are not on track to meet the 2030 commitments. The 10 countries responsible for about 90% of the illegal killings are seeing little to no progress; four even showed worsening trends compared to 2015-2019.

“The number of birds killed illegally each year remains unacceptably high. For many migratory birds, it spells death before they can even reach their breeding grounds,” EuroNatur project manager Justine Vansynghel said in a press release.

Around 2 billion birds from more than 500 species migrate across the African-Eurasian flyway each year, flying between their breeding grounds in Europe and their wintering grounds in Africa or parts of Asia. But the birds are often indiscriminatelyshot, especially as they cross the Mediterranean.

An estimated 375 bird species, according to a 2016 study, or an average of 25 million birds, are illegally killed or removed from the wild annually in the Mediterranean alone. Species including the vulnerable European turtledove (Streptopelia turtur), the critically endangered sociable lapwing (Vanellus gregarius), and the endangered Egyptian vulture (Neophron percnopterus) “have suffered severe population declines,” partly due to the “ immense scale” of the illegal killings, the new report said.

Some countries that showed significant decreases in killings from 2020-2024 compared to 2015-2019 were Albania, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cyprus and Spain.

Of the 10 countries with the highest levels of bird killings, Croatia and Greece showed slight improvement since 2020, but the progress was considered not enough. Azerbaijan, Italy, France and Lebanon showed no significant change. In Egypt, Syria and Libya, illegal bird killings rose starting 2020. Cyprus showed major improvement since 2015 but also showed a slight increase since 2020. Mongabay reported earlier this year that Maltese hunters often head to Egypt for mass bird-hunting trips.

“High levels of illegal killing in one country can wipe out conservation successes in another. We urgently need stronger, coordinated, cross-border action across the full flyway,” Barend van Gemerden, global flyways program coordinator at BirdLife International, said in the statement. “Reaching the 2030 goal is a tough challenge, but not an impossible one.”

Banner image of an Egyptian vulture by Mildeep via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).