One Voice in court for mountain Galliformes!

Hunters are rubbed up the right way by the prefectures. A habit of State services who have not always understood that society has changed and that the requirement to set an example in terms of respecting nature and biodiversity is essential for the population. Under the pretext that it has always been done this way, it is no longer conceivable or tolerable to publish decrees indulging hunters, and what’s more, by justifying them, under clearly incorrect pretexts.

According to Muriel Arnal, President of One Voice:

Saving grey partridges in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques is urgent!

The Pyrénées-Atlantiques Prefecture has not spared any effort in pleasing hunters. The order that we are contesting and trying to get urgently suspended currently allows them to slaughter four partridges each in the mountain ranges in the 2022-2023 season. But what the Prefecture omits to mention in its decree is, neither more or less, the number of hunters and the maximum number of slaughtered partridges permitted.

If we therefore take the decree at face value, and despite the species being protected on a European level by the Birds Directive, it would theoretically be possible to eradicate these animals from the department, if there are a ‘sufficient’ amount of hunters! An even bigger scandal when we know that the population of these birds is already in constant decline in the Pyrenees mountains, and classified as ‘near-threatened’. The slightest gunshot on one of these grey partridges is therefore also a fatal shot on the entire species.

To the rescue of black grouse on borrowed time...

As for the black grouse in the Alpes de Haute-Provence, the Prefecture has authorised, despite the species being ‘vulnerable’ in the Rhône-Alpes region and also having been ‘near-threatened’ in France since 2016, the slaughter of forty-two of them! An aberration, when we know that the reasons given for issuing this authorisation is the reproductive success of these birds in the current year. But... is this not the exact opposite of the effect expected from the constant conservation efforts implemented for the species? As in many other case files, we are facing prefectural services who are completely disconnected from the climate emergency and, in this context, also from the protection necessary for wildlife.

Animals are dying from the inactivity and short-term vision of our civil service, being reinforced in its conservative habits by a hunting lobby well-rooted in local networks. To promote animal rights and defend birds and all other animals, One Voice will not move an inch.

Translated from the French by Joely Justice