New request by Animal Cross, AVES and One Voice against yet another blatantly anti-wolf ministerial decree
The Ministry of Ecology (yes, the Ministry of Ecology) and the Ministry of Agriculture have once again given in to the farming lobby, and in February signed a new decree making wolf shooting more (and more) flexible by introducing, in most cases, an exemption from protection for herds of cows and horses. The canids’ detractors are never satisfied. Together with Animal Cross and AVES, we have just made a request to the Council of State against this extremely permissive and vague text, calling for it to be annulled.
Hypocritical and, above all, false claims about cow herds being “unprotectable”
Quick to bow to the whims of lobbies, the French State is still claiming that certain herds are unprotectable, despite positive feedback from other countries. Thanks to the complicity of the authorities, breeders will be able to leave cows and horses to their own devices without the slightest protection, then come and ask for shooting authorizations if attacks occur.
The administration welcomes with open arms the shenanigans of the livestock industry, which wants nothing more than to have wolves disappeared. The aberrant distinction between cows and sheep, called for by the Savoie Mont-Blanc Interdepartmental Chamber of Agriculture, has been served up as a matter of course.
Prefects’ dishonesty prosecuted in administrative courts
This backward step in legislation, decried by the National Council for the Protection of Nature and denounced by 74% of French respondents to the public consultation, is intolerable. It is all the more worrying given the tendency of prefects to systematically admit that a herd of cows is unprotectable, without even verifying this in practice.
Against these lax and complacent authorities, we have made requests in four departments: Nièvre with AVES, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, Alpes-Maritimes and Isère. We are awaiting the hearing dates. It’s intolerable that the administration should persist in failing to protect flocks of any kind, and then go after the wolves!
The Besançon administrative court has already ruled in our favour twice: in June 2024, it annulled an order issued by the Doubs prefect in 2022, which had (wrongly) unilaterally declared that a herd of cows could not be protected, and then last January annulled six other orders issued in 2022 in the Jura region, for the same reason.
Let’s put an end to the hypocrisy of the State and its prefects, who want to wipe out all wolves without exception, including this exceptional pair on the Millevaches plateau.
For these majestic animals, which 8 out of 10 French people consider indispensable to our ecosystems, sign our petition.