Hearing of 12 October 2023: wood pigeons in the Pyrenees victims of hunting deserve a clear defence
A hearing is happening in Montpellier for the cancellation of a decree authorising the massacre of wood pigeons during their migratory period.
In March 2022, we were successful in partially suspending a decree by the Aude Prefecture authorising the slaughter of wood pigeons in the middle of their migratory period. On 12 October 2023, we will be at the Montpellier Administrative Tribunal to ask for the cancellation of this same law and to protect these animals in the long term. The persecution of these birds, already victims of intensive farming and growing urbanisation, must stop.
Wood pigeons, wild geese, rooks and carrion crows, and even grey partridges and larks… One Voice has been fighting for years for all birds that are subjected to hunters’ destructive obsession, even when their survival is already endangered by human activities. It is hard to believe that these trigger-happy people will only stop when nature is silent… We will never accept these killings.
Wood pigeons used as targets
By classifying wood pigeons as a ‘species likely to cause damage’, the Aude Prefecture authorised shots to start again on 20 February 2022, ten days after the end of the hunting season and in the middle of the spring migration. A law that trampled all over the European ‘Birds’ Directive in addition to providing no proof of the damage supposedly caused to crops.
These nomads, simply passing through our coastal skies on their return from Spain, will be killed before even being able to land on French soil. We were also successful in partially suspending this decree, whose sole aim was to prolong a deadly hobby, and we have been asking for a year and a half that it be annulled to be able to draw a line under this case once and for all.
Hunters want to replace the beating of wings with the whistling of bullets… we oppose this!
Already in 2018, the Ministry of the Ecological Transition, whose complacency towards our opponents is more a rule than an exception, had given them authorisation on a plate to kill greylag geese flying through our skies from February onwards.
For wood pigeons in the Pyrenees, we will be at the Montpellier Administrative Tribunal on 12 October 2023 for the hearing, starting at 10am.
Translated from the French by Joely Justice