In Corrèze, there will be no digging out this year; the badgers will live!
The Corrèze prefectural decree allowing an additional period for underground badger hunting with hounds has just been suspended thanks to One Voice's proceedings.
The Limoges Administrative Tribunal has just ordered an urgent suspension of the Corrèze prefectural decree which anticipated the authorisation of an additional period for underground badger hunting with hounds from 15 May to 14 September. It is a truly wonderful victory, which will allow the young badgers from this year to take their first steps surrounded by their parents, sheltered from the risk of being driven out and killed by diggers, surrounded by dogs, something we have continuously condemned since our undercover investigation.
At the hearing on 1 June, we faced the Corrèze Prefecture. The hunters themselves did not come and did not send a lawyer either. After the report from the urgent applications judge, we could express ourselves.
Yes, it was urgent for the badgers in Corrèze
The first thing was to assert the urgency for badgers being threatened with imminent death. The order was from 11 May, the request had been filed on 13 May and the opening date for the additional hunting period was 15 May, for a hearing two weeks after, during which badgers had undoubtedly already lost their lives…
Especially as the Prefecture itself recognises that it is possible that young badgers still depend on their parents and are living in the setts at this time. On the other hand, the state of the badger population is uncertain, to the point where we are asking for them to be classified as a protected species. Finally, as usual, the grounds on which damages are attributed to badgers by the Prefecture are precarious to say the least. And other animals, whose species are protected, can find themselves in setts, which would be drastic.
According to Muriel Arnal, Founding President of One Voice:
«Badgers are intelligent, social beings, they have an essential role in our ecosystems. It is implausible to massacre them. What’s more, in such a barbaric way! We have clearly demonstrated this during our infiltration of a crew. There is no reason to authorise additional periods for this bloody hobby other than as a convenience for hunters because the soil is looser in the summer, and they lack hobbies. Now is the season when the young are still totally dependent on their parents. A disgrace for the authorities who compromise themselves out of complacency! We maintain that, on the contrary, it is necessary to protect badgers, as is the case in numerous neighbouring countries such as England, Wales, the Netherlands, Denmark, Greece, and Hungary.»
Prefectural arguments blasted — as always — by hunters
After the Prefecture revealed their arguments, the President posed questions to their representative on the duration of the hunting period (initial and additional); on the damage caused specifically by badgers, to which the Prefecture responded by hiding behind a graph; and on their choice to spread the decree out throughout the whole department and not only to one part of the area.
Released in open countryside by the hunters, the Prefecture was neither able, nor knew how to, convince
But for us, the important thing was that the decree had been made on the basis of insufficient and incomplete information. On one hand, hardly a third of the local authorities had responded to the survey by the hunters’ federation; on the other hand, the graph released by the Prefecture confirms that the damage that they attributed to the badgers was decreasing! Finally, the Prefecture did not show an absence of other satisfactory solutions instead of killing animals, innocent by definition, again and again.
After this hearing, the urgent applications judge therefore decided that the Prefecture’s arguments did not hold water: the figures were biased and other solutions must exist. In Corrèze, badgers can therefore spend their summer in peace.
This really great news comes as a culmination to extend the first International Badger Day, celebrated in mid-May with our partners. It was an occasion to raise awareness among the public of these very sociable builder animals and to call on them to take part in three petitions that you can of course continue to sign:
- the one on our dedicated website presenting the reality of digging out and calling for badgers to be protected,
- the one calling for a radical reform on hunting, notably with a ban on underground hunting with hounds, supported by more than forty other organisations and voted for by more than eight in ten French people (IPSOS/One Voice survey from September 2021), and finally,
- the one on the Senate’s website.
Translated from the French by Joely Justice