14 contested badger orders: Press release
One Voice, together with ASPAS and AVES France, is calling on the Administrative Court of Rennes to immediately suspend 14 prefectural orders — one per constituency — authorising officially appointed huntmasters to organise massive and virtually unlimited hunts at the authorities’ initiative against badgers throughout the department of Finistère until 31 December 2026. The hearing will take place on Tuesday 21 July 2026 at 2.30 pm.
These orders amount to a veritable free pass granted to officially appointed huntmasters: an unlimited number of hunts at the authorities’ initiative throughout the department, with no restrictions on the number of badgers killed, and the possibility of enlisting up to thirty hunters.
The authorised methods are extremely broad: shooting, including at night, trapping, but also ‘manual’ and ‘mechanical’ digging-out. The former is none other than underground hunting—which the Administrative Court of Rennes had already, at our request, suspended in the Finistère for the additional period in 2026, by an order dated 10 June. Is the Prefecture attempting to circumvent this court ruling by including underground hunting amongst the authorised hunting methods?
For hours on end, badgers are cornered at the bottom of their burrows and bitten by dogs – which also suffer injuries during the operation – before being dragged out using tongs that maim them, and then killed. As for ‘mechanical’ digging, using a digger or backhoe loader, this amounts to crushing the burrows and burying entire families alive, doomed to die of suffocation.
At this time of year, the young are still present in the burrows. Terrified by the dogs, gunfire and machinery, young badgers still dependent on their mothers risk being injured, crushed, buried alive or killed outright. And while the summer’s heatwaves and droughts are already taking their toll on wildlife, making access to water and food more difficult, the State has chosen to compound this with the violence of these hunts — without any real justification based on alleged damage; it is, yet again, the same old cronyism….
These orders are moreover published without any prior public consultation and in complete contravention of the law, and are based on arbitrariness, not science. The three organisations are calling on the Administrative Court of Rennes to suspend them and to protect badgers, these architects of nature and pillars of biodiversity.
14 contested badger orders: Press release
In the Finistère, One Voice is challenging 14 orders that subject badgers to unrestricted hunting