An alert and tears in Sologne

Our friend Solognot wishes to remain anonymous, but we have felt his strong need to express the uneasiness shared by so many French people that hunting oppresses. Here, certainly more than elsewhere. Straddling three departments (Cher, Loiret, Loir-et-Cher), Sologne is 500,000 hectares, 70% of which is classified as one of the largest Natura 2000 areas in Europe. Historically, this sparsely urbanized territory, full of forests and ponds, has delighted hunters, many of whom come from Paris or abroad. Here, not far from Chambord and its ceremonial hunts, history has devoted these natural spaces to the leisure time of the rich and who have placed their economic weight on the local economy ...

Call for resistance

For the residents who do not hunt, but are simply eager to take advantage of their natural environment, the woods, the water features are not walked across without apprehension. Plenty of death, the hunters repeat the same sentence to them: "you go at your own risk". In fact, the sound of constant shots that ring out are in every corner of the forest, the climate of fear and insecurity is permanently there. "I know a schoolmistress who was confronted by the frenzied cavalcade of a hut during a school outing in the forest. She will not repeat this experience again given the terror that had struck the children ...".

Here, the hunters are at home and in their element. The hunting toll by year compared to the rest of France, is at a record level: especially being made up of private forests, Sologne sees its natural territory becoming more and more surrounded by fences of all kinds which delimit it, carve it up. Almost 4,000 linear km, this is huge! For the owners, wherever they come from, it's all profit: tax exemption (including the installation of fences), sale of hunting rights in enclosed spaces, attractive venues where hunting is permitted all year, sale of game meat slaughtered in Rungis, sale of wood… For the others, human and non-human animals, it's hell.

A terrible mess, but with impunity...

The worst part is that to the animals already trapped by fences or in maintained feeding areas, they add imported animals, without much control either, in order to feed large hunting clubs. All the natural gene codes and the behaviour of the wildlife are abused, with its paradoxical consequences… “We see at the edge of the roads groups of pheasants released for hunting. Accustomed to humans, they regroup and let themselves be driven without even trying to flee. Wild boars, manoeuvring as best they can within fenced off corridors, frequently being led onto the roads. The road accidents created by this will of course justify the need to hunt them… ”.

At the end of these ecological continuities, which disrupt the movement of humans and animals, there is visible pollution, close to the Loire, Cher, Sauldre: pellets, cartridges not picked up, bottles of alcohol, mass animal graves, sometimes full and found decomposing by the waysides ... All this with perfect impunity: landowners have power, whether locally or on a national basis.

Our witness tells us of his disgust, his feeling of helplessness. He wants to mobilize more people to try to curb this excessive hunting that is devastating Sologne. Anyone wishing to answer their call, in order to protect animals and the biodiversity, can contact One Voice. And our petition to radically reform hunting is also a means of action. Please Sign the petition!