Underground hunting with hounds: are we moving towards a cancellation in Manche and Orne following the suspension? New hearings for badgers

Underground hunting with hounds

In these departments, hundreds of badger cubs that have only just been born are preparing themselves to be subjected to the hell of underground hunting with hounds. Year after year, the State has shown their extreme familiarity with the hunting social circle. Underground hunting with hounds sadly illustrates this statement: despite rulings, prefectures persist in authorising this cruel practice for the pleasure of a small number of people, at the risk of resorting to ruses that do not fool anyone.

In Manche and Orne, this is exclusively with intervention by us and AVES, our partner on this case file: on 10 May and 4 August 2023, the Caen Administrative Tribunal suspended the prefectural decrees. Clear decisions that have swept away authorities’ arguments and immediately put an end to the additional digging out that was requested. And the results were the same almost everywhere in France, making 2023 a record year for badgers.

The stake: a pure and simple end to additional periods

On 14 November, the Caen Administrative Tribunal will definitively decide on the decrees that they themselves suspended, a few weeks before the State Council unambiguously stated an absolute ban on killing young badgers. Although the Nantes Administrative Court of Appeal has just confirmed that the additional period for underground hunting with hounds in 2021 in Calvados was illegal, we are hopeful that the one in Caen will not retract their statement and that they will cancel the decrees.

And we will not stop at national jurisdictions: because this morbid hobby violates the Bern Convention, which protects badgers, we have filed a complaint alongside ten other associations against France before the Bern Committee. More than ever, these actions allow us to envisage the end of digging out badgers in spring and summer.

Today, 84% of French people oppose hunting animals in their burrows. To help us to give them a voice and to save as many badgers and their cubs as possible, support us and sign our petition to say stop to underground hunting with hounds, including outside of the additional periods!

Translated from the French by Joely Justice