Badgers saved in the Aisne: Press release
Following a request by One Voice, ASPAS and AVES France, the Administrative Court of Amiens has suspended the prefectural order authorising an additional period of underground badger hunting in the Aisne from 15 June to 13 September 2026. The digging-out will cease immediately in this French department: badgers, including many young ones still dependent on their parents, have been spared a violent death.
Underground hunting involves cornering badgers at the bottom of their burrows with the aid of dogs, for hours on end, before extracting them with tongs and killing them. Taking place in the height of summer, the supplementary season also condemned badger cubs, who only become independent in the autumn.
The judge upheld the two conditions required for a suspension: urgency and serious doubt as to the legality of the order. Urgency, firstly, because the badger population in the department is unknown. Secondly, there is serious doubt, as it is forbidden to kill badger cubs.
This suspension, secured with the assistance of the law firm Géo-Avocats, follows a series of favourable rulings in other French departments: administrative courts have also recently suspended equivalent orders issued in Haute-Marne, Cher and Ille-et-Vilaine.
Opposed to hunting in all its forms, One Voice stresses that underground hunting is one of the cruellest practices: a torture lasting several hours, inflicted for leisure, on a slow-breeding species for which there is no justification for persecution. The organisation will continue its campaign, one department after another, until this practice is banned.
Badgers saved in the Aisne: Press release
The courts have ruled against the extended badger hunting season in the Aisne