LAHORE: Hunters having licence to shoot black and brown partridges in Punjab are exceeding their limit to kill the bird which is already facing extinction.

Members of a hunting team belonging to Lahore say they were shocked to see the number of birds shot down by hunters on the opening day of the hunting on Dec 3 in Kalar Kahar and Choa Saidan Shah.

Officially, the hunting is allowed on Sundays from Dec1 to Jan 31.

Requesting anonymity, they said the wildlife department had allowedhunting in almost all tehsils of 18 districts in the province, unlike the previous practice of opening just one tehsil in a district.

They said black partridges population was already thin in many tehsils but the department allowed their hunting on the basis of a flawed survey.

They urged the chief minister and the governor to take notice of the birds` killing spree and stop its hunting immediately.

They said the official teams were moving in the hunting area to check any violation, but their number was too small compared with the number of hunting teams.