One Voice is back at the Administrative Tribunals to save mountain Galliformes

These wonderful birds truly have many threats weighing against them… for example, we are thinking about global warming that strongly affects mountain environments and the animals that live there, disruptions during sensitive periods due to tourist seasons, or even deforestation… And on top of this, they are still hunted despite common sense and their deplorable conservation status!

As an example, the grey mountain partridges are classified as ‘near-threatened’ on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list in France, which indicates that the species will be faced with a heightened risk of extinction in the wild in the near future.

Despite this sub-species of grey partridge only being present in the Pyrenean chain, the Pyrénées-Orientales Prefect has, within the decree opening the 2023-2024 hunting season, directly authorised killing two partridges per day and per head (with a maximum limit of 10 partridges per hunter) during the period from 17/09/2023 to 11/11/2023.

It is all the more unbearable that this morbid quota is perfectly arbitrary since the administration has not even waited for the results of the tally that took place in the summer to define a number of grey mountain partridges to be slaughtered. The Prefect has therefore not based this on any methodology.

Either way, continuing to authorise this massacre is quite simply absurd and unjustifiable. Slaughtering birds does not respond to any justifiable need to ‘regulate’ (impossible for hunters to hide behind this kind of argument) a species that is already threatened everywhere and whose representatives are just asking to live in peace. In other words, such a hunt has no other function than a hobby for those who practice it. An unhealthy and particularly debatable hobby on an ethical level, at a time when biodiversity and the living beings who comprise it are suffering a mass slump.

For all of these reasons, One Voice has entered a plea for a cancellation and an emergency interim suspension proceeding. The hearing, set for 30 August, will tell us if our sensible arguments have convinced the Tribunal. In any case, we will continue to fight for every grey partridge’s life and all the more so for all mountain Galliformes!

Translated from the French by Joely Justice