Badger digging: suspensions in Aveyron and Cher, new hearings in seven other departments!
While the hunting season has just opened in several departments, administrative courts are once again suspending one after the other the decrees authorizing the supplementary underground venery period (PCVST) for badgers. In the Aveyron department, where we were attacking with AVES, and in the Cher department, where we were alone, the courts ruled in our favor. Nearly 400 individuals will have their lives saved. And this is just the start of a new marathon to save badgers! On May 23, the courts in Rennes and Rouen will examine the tracking operations starting this month in the Eure and Côtes-d’Armor departments at 10.30am and 3pm respectively. On May 30 at 9.45am and June 6 at 10.45am, the courts in Limoges and Orléans will hold hearings to give final rulings on previous years’ orders in five departments (Corrèze, Cher, Loir-et-Cher, Loiret, Eure-et-Loir).
No underground venery in the Aveyron and Cher departments!
Every year at this time of year, nearly 200 badgers are killed in each of these departments. But once again, the judges ruled that there were young badgers in the burrows, and that digging them up endangered them, even though the law protects them.
After our victory, with AVES, in the Finistère department, badgers will now be able to care for their young in three departments without the risk of being hunted down for hours and killed in cold blood. On May 23, in front of the administrative courts of Rennes (at 10:30 a.m., for the Côtes-d’Armor department) and Rouen (at 3 p.m., for the Eure department), we will be doing our utmost to obtain further suspensions.
Meanwhile, files from previous years are in the process of being definitively settled.
Last year, we launched no fewer than 37 emergency appeals against the supplementary period. The result: 31 victories, and nearly 4,000 badgers saved! For these cases, once the emergency period is over, the courts must give their final verdict. On May 30 in Limoges (Corrèze 2023 PCVST decree) and June 6 in Orléans (Cher 2024, Loir-et-Cher 2023, Eure-et-Loir 2023 and Loiret 2023), they will be able to confirm their position against all these decrees, which they have already suspended.
If they rule in our favor, then the message sent to the prefects will be crystal clear: stop authorizing the supplementary underground hunting period! Enough is enough, stop adopting year after year orders that everyone knows to be illegal! It’s high time that the authorities, instead of systematically taking the hunters’ side, finally sided with the general interest, the law… and the animals.
For all badgers, support us, sign the petition to ban digging and demand protection for badgers, and even more widely, for a radical reform of hunting!