The additional period for underground hunting with hounds cancelled in five new departments!
In 2023, badger families in Aube, Haute-Marne, Aisne, Ardennes, and the Pyrénées-Atlantiques have been able to spend the spring sheltered from diggers. On our own in Aube and with AVES in the four other departments, we have obtained an urgent suspension of all of these decrees that were authorising the killing of hundreds of individuals after hours of suffering. With five new decisions, the administrative tribunals in Châlons-en-Champagne, Amiens, and Pau have definitively confirmed that digging out in the spring and summer was in fact illegal! A new step in the fight against underground hunting with hounds, a few weeks before the opening of the additional period.
A consensus from the tribunals: yes, underground hunting with hounds kills the young!
For its supporters, underground hunting with hounds is a “selective” type of hunting. We would laugh at such an idea if, every year, thousands of badgers did not perish at the hands of diggers following a relentless hunt. Because reality is much darker: hunters destroy everything in their way and, when they are not directly killed, the young, whose parents have been slaughtered, are left to their own devices and end up dying alone.
Despite delays by our opponents, the debate is now over: the State Council has confirmed that the law strictly bans killing the young. And tribunal after tribunal, the legal system is stating that underground hunting with hounds directly puts badger cubs in danger, as the tribunals have just done in Amiens and Châlons-en-Champagne.
Making animals suffer in the name of a hobby: that’s enough!
Authorising the killing of thousands of animals so that hunters who are bored can let off steam outside of the hunting season: this is the real reason for prefects’ determination to authorise this practice. Rather than assuming, they put forward more and more arguments that are faker than the last. But now, masks are slipping, and systematically accusing badgers of all evils no longer works!
A few weeks before the opening of the additional periods for 2024, these legal decisions are sending a clear message to prefects: do not authorise digging out in the spring or summer! To send this message along with us, sign our petition against underground badger hunting with hounds for a radical reform of hunting. More than eight in ten French people (84%) are already in favour of a ban on digging out (IPSOS/One Voice survey, October 2023). It is time to act.