One Voice goes to court for badgers targeted by digging operations in the Rhône and Vendée regions
With 2024 still to come to an end, the prefects of the Rhône and Vendée regions are rushing to set complementary underground hunting periods in their regions for 2025. These decrees are designed to please hunters at the expense of badgers and their young, whom the State refuses to leave in peace. Even if it means going against the courts. To defend them, we are calling for the suspension and, with our partners, the annulment of these texts.
Bias and opacity
In the Rhône region, badgers are hunted down and extracted from their burrows to be violently killed. This ordeal will continue until January 15, 2025. But that wasn’t enough for the prefect! To ensure that hunters are not deprived of their cruel games for too long, he has ordered a complementary period of underground hunting from May 15 to August 15, 2025. An order based solely on the opinions… of the Departmental Federation of Hunters and the Departmental Hunting and Wildlife Commission. As for the report resulting from the public consultation, which is often taken by storm by trigger-happy hunters, it doesn’t even appear on the prefecture’s website. So much for transparency! We have immediately made a request to demand the suspension of this decision, and will be taking joint action with LPO AURA, FNE Rhône and FNE AURA to obtain its annulment.
Summer-long massacres?
The Prefect of the Vendée region is planning to allow badgers on his territory to be dug up from May 15 to September 14, 2025, giving them even less respite. We are ready to challenge this outrageous decree to have it suspended and then, in partnership with AVES, annulled. Even if it is published at the last minute, as the prefectures are doing to prevent us from rescuing the animals they are sacrificing to the hunters.
Justice is on the animals’ side
The persecution by the authorities who are supposed to protect them and of the hunters won’t change a thing: the complementary underground hunting period is living its last days. In 2023, we had already saved no fewer than 4,000 badgers, and repeated this feat in 2024. The Council of State itself has reiterated the absolute prohibition on killing young badgers, who remain dependent until they reach sexual maturity, and not until they are weaned, as the diggers wanted to persuade us so they could prey on their parents for longer and longer. Across France, the courts have ruled in our favor, and more and more texts are being declared illegal. We’re not stopping there!
To save badgers from the danger that threatens them in the Vendée region, take part in the public consultation open until December 27. And sign our petition to abolish underground hunting!