Maybe not the ‘Pablo Escobar of Rigaous*’, but this pensioner has killed and sold thousands of robins

The hearing for us against a retired farmer was held on Tuesday 26 September 2022 for the destruction and sale of robins in Revest-les-Eaux, as well as possession of a weapon without a licence.

One Voice as well as ASPAS, France Nature Environnement PACA, and the LPO all filed civil cases in this bleak case incriminating this man who had regularly engaged in illegal activities capturing and killing robins in a phenomenal quantity.

To perpetrate his crimes, the defendant had several traps, as ‘traditional’ as they are cruel, and for which the use was in fact suspended by the State Council following our appeal in 2021. In this case, they were steel traps that close around the necks of their victims. Once decapitated, he consumed them or froze them to sell on the black market.

According to his own statement, he therefore poached 20 to 25 robins a day; according to an estimation by the French Office for Biodiversity, that is 5000 birds killed each annual season.

On allegations from a witness having bought robins from him for 8 euros a dozen, we discovered that the poacher carried out this abuse for a long time and was responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of additional robins.

Faced with such crimes and after a very intense hearing, the prosecutor requested a 5000 euro fine, a ban on keeping a weapon, and that the ruling be published in French hunting magazine, Le Chasseur français.

The magistrates’ court went much further. He sentenced him to a 6 month suspended sentence, a 25,000 euro fine, the confiscation of all of his seals, a ban on keeping a weapon, compensation for all civil parties up to 3,000 euros each in moral damages, as well as the publication of his decision as soon as it is final in Le Chasseur français magazine.

*Rigaous: Provençal name for robins.

Translated from the French by Joely Justice