One Voice in court for mountain Galliformes!
One Voice is urgently tackling the Pyrénées-Atlantiques Prefecture for grey partridges and the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence one for black grouse. The hearings are on 3 and 4 October 2022.
To please hunters, prefects continue to attack birds. More specifically, two mountain Galliformes: black grouse in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence and grey partridges in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques. The emergency interim hearings are set respectively for Monday 3 October at the Marseille Administrative Tribunal at 2pm, a case in which One Voice is filing a voluntary intervention supporting the Ligue pour la Protection des Oiseaux [LPO: League for the Protection of Birds] case file on black grouse, and at the Pau Administrative Tribunal on Tuesday 4 October at 2pm, where One Voice will be alone in defending the grey partridges.
Edit from 4 October, 4pm:
At the end of the hearing on 3 October in Marseille, the urgent applications judge announced that they would make their decision “in a few days”.
According to someone from the Pau Administrative Tribunal, the decision should be returned the same evening or the next morning.
Edit from 4 October, 8:20pm:
The urgent applications judge at the Pau Administrative Tribunal suspended the decree on the same day as the hearing. From this evening, grey partridges can no longer can be killed in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques department. We are very proud of this victory!
Edit from 5 October 2022:
The Marseille Tribunal has suspended the decrees contested by us and the LPO.
Hunters are rubbed up the right way by the prefectures. A habit of State services who have not always understood that society has changed and that the requirement to set an example in terms of respecting nature and biodiversity is essential for the population. Under the pretext that it has always been done this way, it is no longer conceivable or tolerable to publish decrees indulging hunters, and what’s more, by justifying them, under clearly incorrect pretexts.
According to Muriel Arnal, President of One Voice:
«Hunters are perpetually trying to push the limits of their deadly hobby. But it is not conceivable to leave the animals, registered on the list of animals to be protected, to be shot at! The reports, which confirm what we have been claiming for decades, are not lacking: animals are disappearing from the planet, which is extremely worrying for all of us. We cannot sit back and let this happen.»
Saving grey partridges in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques is urgent!
The Pyrénées-Atlantiques Prefecture has not spared any effort in pleasing hunters. The order that we are contesting and trying to get urgently suspended currently allows them to slaughter four partridges each in the mountain ranges in the 2022-2023 season. But what the Prefecture omits to mention in its decree is, neither more or less, the number of hunters and the maximum number of slaughtered partridges permitted.
If we therefore take the decree at face value, and despite the species being protected on a European level by the Birds Directive, it would theoretically be possible to eradicate these animals from the department, if there are a ‘sufficient’ amount of hunters! An even bigger scandal when we know that the population of these birds is already in constant decline in the Pyrenees mountains, and classified as ‘near-threatened’. The slightest gunshot on one of these grey partridges is therefore also a fatal shot on the entire species.
To the rescue of black grouse on borrowed time…
As for the black grouse in the Alpes de Haute-Provence, the Prefecture has authorised, despite the species being ‘vulnerable’ in the Rhône-Alpes region and also having been ‘near-threatened’ in France since 2016, the slaughter of forty-two of them! An aberration, when we know that the reasons given for issuing this authorisation is the reproductive success of these birds in the current year. But… is this not the exact opposite of the effect expected from the constant conservation efforts implemented for the species? As in many other case files, we are facing prefectural services who are completely disconnected from the climate emergency and, in this context, also from the protection necessary for wildlife.
Animals are dying from the inactivity and short-term vision of our civil service, being reinforced in its conservative habits by a hunting lobby well-rooted in local networks. To promote animal rights and defend birds and all other animals, One Voice will not move an inch.
Translated from the French by Joely Justice