The hunting season is over, but violence against animals continues
The end of February marks the official close of the hunting season. This date might suggest that wildlife is finally granted a few months’ respite, but that is far from being the case. In the forests, stags, does and roe deer will be hunted until the end of March during driven hunts, whilst wild boar, regarded as vermin, and all birds and mammals classified as ‘species likely to cause damage’ (ESOD), can be killed all year round. This ‘end of season’ curtain call is nothing but a sham.
One might like to believe that after February, wild animals can finally live in peace, without fear of bullets or traps hidden in the undergrowth. But the hunt does not stop at the dawn of spring. From the driven hunts extendeing until the end of March to the early hunts for fallow deer and roe deer, which will resume on 1 June, passing through the sadistic underground hunts for badgers and foxes, or the unjustified and sometimes illegal hunts at the authorities’ initiative, the pressure on wildlife never ceases. Behind the idea of a hunting season ‘confined’ to a specific time frame, a vast system of exemptions allows the persecution to continue throughout the year, well beyond the official calendar.
The hunting season? A fiction!
Because this ‘season’ system is perpetuating a fiction: that of a limited and regulated hunt. In reality, many wild animals, notably wild boar and foxes – listed as ESOD species – can be killed throughout the year for the sole pleasure of hunters. Not to mention the brutality of the practices!
Mutilated animals, acts trivialised and left unpunished
In Haute-Savoie, in the Veigy-Foncenex nature reserve, a fox was found mutilated and hung from a tree, displayed as a macabre warning. In Gironde, at Noaillan, a young stag was discovered with its legs severed, abandoned in a forest. In the Tarn, at Paulinet, a wild boar was dragged for nearly two kilometres behind a vehicle, leaving a long trail of blood on a private track.
We continue to denounce these acts which reveal how hunters view animals. Yet they are not illegal and are still too often downplayed and rarely punished.
Far from being isolated incidents, these deadly acts highlight the urgent need to challenge a system which, behind rules and dates that are merely for show, continues to sow death. Together, let’s put an end to this hypocrisy. For the declassification of foxes and for a radical reform of hunting, sign our petitions.
The hunting season is over, but violence against animals continues
The hunting season officially closes at the end of February. But for many wild animals, the hunt never stops.