The High Court on Thursday ordered the Israel Nature and Parks Authority to ban all hunting of partridges as of next Thursday.

The decision was made after The Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel launched a successful appeal to the High Court, claiming partridges were dangerously close to becoming extinct in Israel due to excessive hunting.

A Knesset committee recently declared partridges a protected species, but In order to appease hunters the INPA continued to allow small-scale hunting in areas where it claimed local populations had recovered.

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In such instances, hunters were granted limited licenses that allowed them to hunt up to three partridges a day.

The SPNI insisted, however, that the ban applied to all hunting of partridges throughout Israel.