Emergency: 500 chamois in the Doubs region to be slaughtered
500 chamois are targeted by the Doubs Wildlife Management Commission in the hunting plan for the 2024/2025 season. Not only does this decision call into question the harmony of the region’s wildlife, where they are emblematic, but according to our partner ASPAS, it is also based solely on alleged motives and accusations of forest destruction, as well as the absence of predators.
A declining population wrongly accused
These peaceful, self-regulating animals are once again the target of hunters in the Doubs region who wish to kill them en masse this year. To justify this measure, which is a disgrace to animal rights and biodiversity, the region’s wildlife management commission claims that they are “destroying forests”.
And yet, thanks to their seasonally-adapted diet, they guarantee the healthy renewal of the trees. Yet they are perpetually accused of “harming” forest development, in order to justify the mass killing they have been subjected to for several years. Indeed, over the last decade, the “destruction” of chamois in the Doubs region has risen from an average of 300 animals killed in 2014 to 550 in 2023.
And the massacres continue at a time when the chamois population in the Doubs is becoming increasingly fragile. Numbers in the region have fallen from 1396 individuals in 2023 to just 1140 in 2024. That’s a loss of more than 200 animals in less than a year, and yet hunters continue to go after them.
A hypocritical justification
Finally, this cruel decision could not be more hypocritical, as it attempts to justify itself by the absence of large carnivores, even though another hunt is being organized simultaneously in the Doubs region, that of wolves, with the multiplication of prefectoral decrees handing out simple defense shooting authorizations like crazy. As for the chamois’ other potential predator, lynxes, they too are regularly the victims of road collisions and poaching. And, as is currently the case with wolves, the Doubs gunmen also wish to “review their status”… How ironic! They decimate chamois under the guise of the absence of predators, whose slaughter they constantly call for. And yet, even the OFB affirms it: the natural growth rate of their populations is in the order of 10-15% per year in the Doubs ecosystems, and lynxes can “regulate” around 10% of existing ungulate populations. This confirms that chamois hunting plans are drawn up without taking into account the presence of wolves and lynxes, guardians of the ecological balance, which is a scientific error in terms of so-called forest protection.
The decision to cull 500 of the Doubs’ characteristic ungulates makes no sense, since the forests would be much better off if chamois, wolves and lynxes were able to regulate themselves peacefully and efficiently, without the intervention of hunters. To oppose this, sign the petition.