Underground hunting with hounds: One Voice at work to defend foxes and badgers

Animals cornered in their burrows by dogs that are forced to go down underground, innocent victims grabbed by metal clamps and ruthlessly killed... We have been speaking out for years against the cruel practice of underground hunting with hounds. Like us, more than eight in ten French people are asking for it to be banned for all animals.

Badger cubs in danger

To blow the monstrosity of this kind of hunting wide open, we have taken considerable risks by infiltrating among diggers. The footage that our investigators have brought back from their infiltration is chilling.

The badgers, rooted out from their shelters after endless moments of terror, are slaughtered with sadistic joy. Including the badger cubs, very much present in the setts and still dependent on their parents in the spring. It is for these young animals, who are killed in total violation of the Environmental Code, that we are still fighting this year to get the prefectural decrees authorising an additional hunting period suspended for this season. This would be ideal for the animals from protected species who sometimes hide in the badgers’ setts and who are also threatened with death.

Foxes: victims of endless persecution

Wrongly considered as pests, foxes can meanwhile be hunted down underground all year round. Mistakenly unpopular, these animals that are in fact intelligent, social, and essential for biodiversity are hunted down day and night, killed by any means with no limit on cruelty and sometimes even hung. And it is not unusual for traps aimed at small canines to make them collateral victims.

There are many more animals considered as ‘pests’, labelled as a species likely to cause damage and hunted relentlessly. We are defending them too, and are fighting to put an end to this massacre of carrion crows and rooks, or even wood pigeons, least weasels, beech martens, or mustelids.

We have been already making a start for several months on the gargantuan task of defending these animals because prefectures and the Ministry for the Ecological Transition are preparing a decree to go over all species classified as likely to cause damage department by department. These animals will then be in great danger for the next three years, subjected to endless hunting. We plan to attack this decree at the State Council as soon as it is published.

On the weekend prior to 15 May (International Badger Day, which we are participating in) we are organising actions to raise awareness throughout France to say no to underground hunting with hounds for badgers and foxes, at tribunals as well as on the streets. Join us!

• Le Pailly,13 May: https://www.facebook.com/events/930412554835689/
• Limoges, 13 May: https://www.facebook.com/events/644482667497499/
• Metz, 13 May: https://www.facebook.com/events/764307091856904/
• Nantes, 13 May: https://www.facebook.com/events/1286433678922809
• Nice, 13 May: https://www.facebook.com/events/254304773766781/
• Rouen, 13 May: https://www.facebook.com/events/993892621599981
• Troyes, 13 May: https://www.facebook.com/events/613390327125428

• Bordeaux, 14 May: https://www.facebook.com/events/1264027404254182
• Gap, 14 May: https://www.facebook.com/event...

• Caylus, 19 May : https://www.facebook.com/event...

• Aix-en-Provence, 20 May: https://www.facebook.com/events/805061284293925/
• Amiens, 20 May: https://www.facebook.com/events/760169785588594
• La Rochelle, 20 May: https://www.facebook.com/events/950134353003200/
• Flers, 27 May : https://www.facebook.com/events/613200817187162/

Translated from the French by Joely Justice