News Archive - Page 17 of 122

Let’s rally for the wolves: we are participating in great numbers in the ministry’s public consultations!

Let’s rally for the wolves: we are participating in great numbers in the ministry’s public consultations!
23.11.2023
Let’s rally for the wolves: we are participating in great numbers in the ministry’s public consultations!
Wildlife

While the current National Action Plan (NAP) for wolves and farming activities will come to end on 31 December, a new plan and draft decree aiming to strengthen the (already formidable) use of lethal shots is currently subject to public consultation. Currently, the aim is to ensure the effective protection of a species but here, contrary to appearances, it is quite the opposite that is being sought. Given the media coverage of the agricultural lobby and the outing of many politicians who show little concern for animals’ fate, we are not expecting much, but still… Help us to advance the fight by responding to these consultations before 7 December 2023.

Wolves are collateral victims of intensive farming practices. Demonised, they are killed in their masses under the pretext of legal shots in the name of protecting herds of animals destined for the abattoir. Unfortunately, wolves are little-known animals who wrongly suffer from a bad reputation. They are, however, sensitive and intelligent, and their ways of life are ultimately similar to our own: they are made up of real families, where each of them has a well-defined function in the wolf cubs’ upbringing. As for their role for such a fragile biodiversity, this no longer needs to be demonstrated! This does not prevent the government from taking ever more unfavourable measures against them, due to the power of the hunting lobbies and industrial agriculture.

Openly anti-wolf projects

The contents of the first consultation surpassed our worst predictions… The plan was void of any substance to the benefit of the sacrosanct interests of farmers. In fact, the document displays unfailing support for existing farming practices without ever questioning their negative consequences. The biggest losers here are clearly the wolves. Their protection is no longer at the heart of the project, in fact quite the opposite: they are appointed as targets to be slaughtered.

The second consultation relates to a draft decree whose purpose is nothing more or less than to reinforce the use of lethal shots. On the program: an increase in the number of shooters, a generalisation of the possibility of using thermal cameras to better target wolves, an end of the obligation to shine a light on them before shooting, the end of the suspension of shooting authorisations when an individual is killed… In short, the draft decree amounts to confirming the possibility of massacring representatives of a protected species.

Unbearable and senseless persecution

The two projects submitted to the consultation have received unfavourable opinions from the CNPN [Conseil national de la protection de la nature – French National Council for the Conservation of Nature]. Despite all of this, the government, committed to defending the worst agricultural interests, remains deaf to warnings from scientists and nature protection associations who recommend not killing wolves.

No matter how unbalanced the game is and how difficult victories are to come by, we will continue to fight for wolves. For more information on who they are and their situation, we invite you to consult our report. We need your support in this fight. This is why we are offering you, below, a ‘toolbox’ that will allow you to participate in the consultation up until 7 December 2023 and therefore to defend wolves.

TO SAY NO TO THE NAP PROJECT, CLICK HERE :

Protecting wolves is not addressed in the project:

No protection aims for wolves appears in the project even though the species is classified as ‘vulnerable’ in France.
Nothing is planned to guarantee that the wolf population will do well in the future.
The NAP project even goes so far as to recognise the need to increase the use of lethal shots. It is hard to imagine anything less protective than this.
As noted by the CNPN, continuing shots, including during the reproduction period, is contrary to the very essence of the status of a protected species.

The NAP project favours farming to the detriment of wolves:

It reverses the logic of the NAP, supposed to be protective, and echoes the anti-wolf discontent of the farmers it defends.
It maintains the unjustified principle of non-protectability of cow herds: a farmer can let his cow herd wander without any supervision or protection, then come and demand authorisation to kill wolves.

The NAP project does not insist enough on the protection of herds with non-lethal methods:

No assessment/feedback on herd protection measures has been established.
The NAP does not bother to strengthen checking measures on the implementation of herd protection measures.

The NAP project disregards the positive impacts of wolves within the ecosystem and does not even address them:

Wolves, however, continue to maintain a balance in natural environments by limiting the development of deer and wild boar populations.
Wolves assist biodiversity.

TO SAY NO TO THE DRAFT DECREE, CLICK HERE :

The draft decree reinforces the use of lethal shots to the detriment of alternative solutions:

The draft decree includes a series of measures intended to ensure that shots kill even more effectively.
This project indirectly paves the way for an unacceptable increase in the upper limits for killing wolves, a protected species.
The draft decree contravenes the logic of “protected species” exemptions which must normally remain exceptional and a last resort.

The draft decree keeps ‘test shots’:

‘Test shots’ – which are similar to real wolf hunts – are part of the project. The government does not even intend to take even a small step in favour of wolves by ending this possibility.

Translated from the French by Joely Justice

Hunting birds by crushing them under a stone: is it the end for stone traps?

Hunting birds by crushing them under a stone: is it the end for stone traps?
22.11.2023
Hunting birds by crushing them under a stone: is it the end for stone traps?
Hunting

If there is one thing that characterises hunters, it is their ability to come up with yet more cruel ways of killing animals. Under the cover of ‘tradition’, they use techniques each more violent than the next that cause intense suffering for field larks, thrushes, lapwings, and all other bird species used as targets here. Our fight against these practices from a bygone era is moving forward: on 23 November 2023 at 9:30am, the State Council will decide on our request to definitely annul the use of s tone traps in Aveyron and Lozère.

Update from 21 December 2023:

It is done! The State Council has just joined the government in definitely revoking the decree authorising the use of stone traps. They do not deem this type of bird hunting as selective, as we had told them. Logical, since the birds were enticed by bait and then killed by being crushed beneath a stone.

Like glue hunting, stone traps will now be nothing but a distant memory for birds. In the months to come, we will continue the fight against this type of traditional hunting coming into force by asking the State Council to once and for all prohibit the repeal of decrees allowing the use of cages and nets in the South-West.

Updated 23 November:

The conclusions by the public reporter were very clear: the decree is illegal both due to the lack of selectivity of the practice and because of the lack of justification that any satisfactory alternative exists. She also questioned the fact that the ministry characterises stone traps as a ‘non-lethal’ trapping method. Obviously – who would believe that a large stone falling on a small bird will kill it? Fools that we are… The decision must be given within two to three weeks.

After glue, cages, nets, and decoys, the moment of truth has come for stone traps

For thrushes in Lozère and Aveyron, stone traps are synonymous with suffering and death. They are small bird traps that spring into action when the bird touches the bait: a stone then falls on it, giving it no chance. When the bird is not killed instantly, it suffers fractures which will condemn it and stop it from flying away. The trapper can then come and get it to finish it off, most often by hand.

Since 2018, we have been leading a relentless fight against all of these types of hunting. While stone traps in Ardennes and glue in the south-west have definitively been banned by the State Council and the decrees authorising cages and nets have been urgently suspended, judges have not yet ruled on stone traps. Beyond their barbaric character, this practice is clearly illegal, as we have been saying for years.

To what point will the government support traditional hunting against birds?

So why continue to persist in authorising these sadistic tools that concern only a handful of people but cause so much suffering to birds? Defending traditions is easy to blame! In reality, it is nothing more or less than satisfying the demands of a lobby. And it is an understatement to say that the current government is giving crazy amounts of energy to protecting this minority who take pleasure in killing.

Under the cover of ‘scientific experimentation’, they also recently allowed the capture of several thousand birds with nets, cages, and stone traps, which is in fact frowned upon by the State Council! Our pleas allowed the suspension of three of the five decrees and it is a safe bet that the government will try its luck again next year in the event that the decrees authorising cages and nets are not definitively cancelled by the State Council by then.

But if the legal system sticks to its consistent position, we are hopeful that stone traps, like trapping and glue hunting, will soon be nothing more than a distant memory for animals. And if,like 70% of French people, you believe that hunting is a cruel practice, sign our petition for a radical reform of it!

Translated from the French by Joely Justice