The Ministry of Ecology continues to let hunters trap larks

Edit from 13 October 2022

The hearing at the State Council for the appeal by One Voice and the ones by the LPO will take place on Thursday 20 October at 10:30am.

The decrees from 4 October 2022, relating to the numbers and the capturing of field larks, in Landes, Lot-et-Garonne, but also in Gironde and the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, using netting and traps (cages), are once more nonsensical regarding the Birds Directive, which specifically makes it clear that traps must be selective. And once more they were issued on a Friday, as they were last year, to allow hunters to start killing birds for the whole weekend before we could intervene.

The maximum number of field larks that can be captured with nets has thus been set at 38,600 in the Gironde department, 56,672 in Landes, 1,230 in Lot-et-Garonne, and at 2,200 in Pyrénées-Atlantiques for the 2022-2023 season, and with regard to the cages, the maximum number authorised for captured field larks is set at 2,870 in Lot-et-Garonne and at 4,928 in Landes. That is 106,500 field larks, to which the collateral victims (other birds caught in the traps) must be added, who will struggle and lose their lives before the hunter-trappers arrive.

One Voice, who have been fighting for years to get these cruel methods banned — that can kill any bird that gets trapped without exception, including individuals from a protected species — will file, as they have already done and as they have announced, the appeals and emergency interim proceedings necessary to allow birds to survive in the south of France. It cannot be that because this kind of particularly barbaric hunting is only practised by only a few hunters, it is allowed to happen. For each bird taken by these traps, we are talking about life or death.

The advantage is essential for the birds concerned and symbolic in terms of cost for the entirety of the population.

According to Muriel Arnal, President of One Voice:

« Birds are living beings to be protected as such. They are among the hardest hit by the sixth mass extinction of species that we are currently experiencing with pesticides putting them in a situation of chronic famine, urbanisation harming their populations with noise, light, and a lack of places to nest... Drought and fires this summer have ended up hitting them head-on. It is essential that we rally for them. These ‘traditional hunting’ decrees are a disgrace. »

Our Ipsos/One Voice survey, released on 6 October 2022, clearly shows that eight to nine French people refuse to allow hunting to be practised in places decimated by heat and summer fires and that they want a ban on traditional hunting (83%, of which 56% are “completely in agreement”).

One Voice will be there throughout France this weekend to raise awareness among the public of the harmful effects of hunting, of the animals hunted, but also of the dogs that are used as weapons and considered to be objects.

Translated from the French by Joely Justice

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En 2022, après plus de 40 ans de combat pour la cause animale, voilà ce que continue de faire la préfecture : autorisation de chasse des alouettes à hauteur de 106500 dans la seule région du sud de la France. Quel chiffre, c'est énorme !
Incroyable de voir que beaucoup n'en ont rien à foutre de l'hécatombe des animaux qui est entrain de se jouer alors qu'elle a déjà plus d'un siècle d'existante, et que nous avons peu de temps désormais pour montrer qu'outre la cruauté, l'homme avait une part d'empathie envers les victimes (sens inversé de celle envers les bourreaux). Même problème pour la conversion : peu de temps pour montrer que celle-ci est une valeur qui aurait dû être intégrée dans la civilisation !