One Voice is filing emergency interim proceedings for corvids against the Jura department. The hearing is on 4 May in Besançon

Edit from 14 May 2022:

On 4 May 2022, the urgent applications judge rejected our request to suspend the decree. We are now waiting for the date of the hearing for the annulment appeal that we have also filed.

But why does France want to kill all of its birds, everywhere, all the time? By hanging or crushing, by gluing, by catching them in nets, by shooting… Including protected birds such as cormorants or western capercaillies or turtledoves… Even during migration, for example Greylag geese, ducks, or wood pigeons. Or raising them for the pleasure of shooting them down, such as pheasants and partridges. And considering some of them as pests, such as pigeons, carrion crows, and rooks?

Birds: the first victims of the current sixth mass extinction

The last descendants of dinosaurs do not have an easy life unfortunately… the environment is less and less welcoming. In towns, food can be plentiful, but the noise and permanent lighting are problems that restrict reproduction. In the countryside, pesticides have ended up starving them.

The sixth mass extinction that is happening does not go easy on birds; quite the contrary. They bear the brunt of the denaturation of the planet by humans. In Jura, the Prefecture considers corvids to be pests to be killed… Even though animals interfere with some human activities, the answer to our problems should not lead to killing them!

Carrion crows and rooks: exceptional beings hunted down in Jura

Corvids are incredibly intelligent individuals and even have their own cultures. However, for years, the Prefect has organised the hunting of them in 239 communes in their department. They can be captured from the date of the signature on the decree until 31 July and can be killed by shooting from the closing of the hunting season until the same date.

We are urgently contesting this decree on various points, among other things because these birds do not harm the health of plants, public health, or the protection of the environment — the only justifications authorised by law — but because of the alleged need to fight against crop damage (which the Prefect does not even have any proof of!)… This is therefore unauthorised.

But also, because each year, and for many years, the Prefect issues identical decrees, ordering for these black birds to be massacred in an unrestricted way outside of the hunting season. It is therefore not about an exceptional measure, but a genuine transfer of power given to hunters.

Finally, the decree has not been submitted for public consultation even though its effects have an impact on the environment.

This is urgent!

Since the end of February, ravens and crows have been mercilessly hunted by hunters in the mountains of Jura. On the day of the hearing, it will be more than two months of them dying every week, with no consideration that the authorisation delivered by the Prefecture does not limit their number to the half of the Department where hunters have been given ‘corvid’ training delivered by FREDON (whose legitimacy we refute on many levels).

The cherry on the cake: the breeding period is therefore open to hunting… something that we have been asking for a reform on for more than four years, through our petition for a radical reform on hunting.

We will not let the Jura Prefecture allow hunters to dictate the law and continue to massacre birds without doing anything! The hearing to get the Prefectural decree urgently suspended has been set for 4 May at the Besançon Administrative Tribunal.

Translated from the French by Joely Justice