Does, stags, roe deers: slaughtering them in the name of forests
Increasing the culling of does, stags, and roe deers, authorizing their hunting in all seasons, reducing quotas and penalties for hunters… The strategy proposed by the administration to supposedly protect the forests managed by the National Forests Office (ONF) consists in sacrificing the lives of wild animals. One Voice denounces this false solution, which aims solely to satisfy the appetites of gun owners and the timber industry. It goes against all ethics and ecological logic.
Killing to preserve life: this is the insane proposal put forward in the new report published jointly by senior officials from the Ministry of Ecological Transition and Agriculture. As the primary targets of hunting with hounds, persecuted during prolonged hunting seasons and recurring victims of administrative hunts, deer, does, and roe deers are already hunted from all sides. Today, they are under serious threat of extermination: the government and the ONF are jointly calling for “a clampdown on wild ungulates”. This is a euphemism for authorizing increased culling and reducing penalties for hunters who do not comply with the quotas in force. The report goes even further and even proposes classifying deer and roe deers as “species likely to cause damage” (ESOD). If this were to happen, they could be hunted all year round and by any means, including guns and traps.
A new offensive against animals
Even though, in another report, the General Inspectorate for the Environment and Sustainable Development (IGEDD) expressly recommends removing group 2 from the ESOD and the Council of State has just overturned part of this classification, the administration is once again targeting what remains of the wildlife population.
Already pointed out by the European Union for its inaction in protecting the environment, the government must not once again give in to the hunting and financial interests of certain parties. Besides submission to hunters, the issue is not so much protecting nature as the lucrative “resource” of wood, threatened by droughts and fires.
Riddled with inconsistencies, the report mentions an increase in the number of cervids. Yet these animals are extremely useful for forest regeneration because they transport seeds. At the same time, wolves, which play a decisive role in natural regulation, are also increasingly persecuted, as their protection status has been downgraded.
So what do we want? Forests emptied of their animals? Faced with this senseless persecution, we stand alongside the animals, advocating an approach other than shooting them. Especially since peaceful alternatives exist: planting fruit trees, creating meadows, forest edges, or even closed canopy areas to encourage tree growth…
To stop this slaughter, One Voice is calling on the Ministry of Ecological Transition to demand the outright abandonment of this deadly project and the abolition of the unjust ESOD status!