Wolf plan 2024-2029: an openly anti-wolf government policy, national action by One Voice

Wolf plan 2024-2029: an openly anti-wolf government policy, national action by One Voice
23.02.2024
Wolf plan 2024-2029: an openly anti-wolf government policy, national action by One Voice
Wildlife

The main thrusts of the 2024-2029 French National Action Plan on wolves and livestock activities (or “Plan Loup”) were presented this Wednesday, February 21. Once again, the government has chosen to side with the intensive farming lobbies. In the face of this programmed extermination, we are mobilizing to make their voices heard. On the first weekend of March, we’ll be present in around twenty towns across France to defend them and try to halt their announced massacre.

This new plan, described as “concerned with the preservation of extensive and pastoral livestock farming”, totally forgets its objective, which is supposed to be the preservation of species! 

In 2024, 209 wolves can be legally killed – perhaps even more if the ceiling is raised, as is almost always the case. In Lyon, our activists will be paying tribute to the 207 wolves killed in 2023. In Draguignan, we will be present in front of the prefecture to raise public awareness of the fate of these animals.

(Definitive and ineffective) lethal shootings made easier

After the disturbing stance taken by the President of the European Commission last September, the culls we have been opposing from the outset are made easier in this new plan of shame! The obligation to light a wolf before shooting has been abolished; the number of shooters has been increased from one to three for simple defense shots; and the use of thermal sights has been generalized for lieutenants of louveterie and pests. The aim is clear: to make it even harder for wolves to escape, even harder for them to get away.

The usefulness of shooting is never questioned. Yet the Wolf Plan 2018-2023 already cast doubt on the effectiveness of this morbid device.[1] Scientific studies suggest that these shots may even have the opposite effects to those intended: if wolves sometimes stop feeding in the same area following the slaughter of a family member, they will in fact move a few kilometers, resolving nothing that breeders blame them for.

Protective measures, the only effective weapon…

… provided that training and controls are deployed on farms. By definition, shooting should remain the exception, as it is a derogation from wolf protection. However, prefectoral decrees are copy-pastes of one another, and their justifications vague and stereotyped. When properly implemented, with adequate support, these measures can effectively guard flocks.

The State refuses to protect farmed animals, opting instead for massacres

In this new plan, everything is done to please intensive farmers, with the compensation scale being revised upwards; even though some herds are not protected! For several months now, we’ve been campaigning for the government to recognize that cows and horses should be protected. In 2023, we initiated proceedings before the Conseil d’État to counter this nonsense.

All these arguments prompted the French national council for nature protection to side with us, with the wolves, when consulted on the 2024-2029 project.

Putting an end to hypocrisy

Let’s not forget that the same farmers who bemoan the fate of their ewes no longer feel the same way when it comes to sending them to slaughter, sometimes by boat for weeks on end in abominable conditions. Losses due to wolves represent only a tiny proportion (0.15%) of the sheep population (ewes and lambs). The proportion due to disease, transport accidents, falls, etc. is ten times higher. 

Even if the game is unbalanced and victories difficult to achieve, we will continue to demand respect and protection for wolves. It’s high time we got away from the anxiety-inducing imaginary world we’ve grown up with about these animals. In this fight against superstition and the relentless attack on biodiversity and nature, we need your support. Sign our petition and join us on March 02 and 03* at our actions in favor of wolves throughout France: Aix en Provence (13), Amiens (80), Bar le Duc (55), Bordeaux (33), Briançon (05), Brive-la-Gaillarde (19), Château Arnoux Saint Auban (04), Draguignan (06), Falaise (14), Gap (05), La Rochelle (17), Lille (59), Limoges (87), Lyon (69), Marseille (13), Metz (57), Nantes (44), Paris (75), Strasbourg (67), Troyes (10).

* Please check the date, place and time before coming: some events will take place in February, or may be subject to change due to unforeseen circumstances. If there is no link to an event in a particular city, refer to the national event.

[1] French national action plan for 2018-2023 concerning wolves and farming activities, page 12: “Concerning the effect of these shots on predation: without suitable spatial and temporal metrics, it is difficult to highlight a general trend on the evolution of damage according to the level of taking.”

February 26 update: clarification of the 0.15% figure concerning French sheep.

Mayors: for the sake of animals and the environment, ban hunting!

Mayors: for the sake of animals and the environment, ban hunting!
22.02.2024
Mayors: for the sake of animals and the environment, ban hunting!
Hunting

Every year, hunting kills tens of millions of animals. From farm-raised pheasants released to be slaughtered, to badgers chased into their burrows, to foxes and birds, this hobby spreads suffering throughout our forests. In addition to stealing lives, it is also a mortal danger to the environment: nearly 8,000 tonnes of lead are discarded every year, not to mention millions of plastic and metal cases. Because action is urgently needed at all levels, One Voice is providing mayors with a draft “turnkey” municipal bylaw to put an end to this absolute plundering of nature.

Animals poisoned, nature polluted: the true toll of hunting

There are the tens of millions that hunters take pleasure in killing every year. Then there are all those – protected species included – who are only wounded and survive with their bodies riddled with lead. This metal, still massively used, is a mortal danger: it pollutes waterways and subsoils and, when ingested by mammals or birds, is the cause of numerous diseases, such as lead poisoning. If they don’t die quickly, they in turn contaminate other animals.

While lead is currently banned only in the immediate vicinity of wetlands, and is still regularly used in ball-trap events, it’s high time to go further: together with the European Environmental Bureau, One Voice is campaigning for these bans to be strengthened. The survival of fish, birds and all those who pay a high price so that a handful of individuals can practice this deadly hobby depends on it.

Every walker knows that, in addition to lead, the soil of our forests is littered with cartridge cases, a mixture of plastic and metal. This pollution is largely kept secret, yet there are ways of taking action!

Mayors: you can act!

Local councilors are often powerless to prevent the destruction of the environment in their communities. When it comes to hunting, the prefects are all-powerful, and it’s easy to understand why when you see how their decisions are all too often taken with the sole aim of satisfying the demands of this lobby – to the point where they sometimes get things mixed up.

However, mayors are not condemned to impotence. They have important prerogatives when it comes to waste. And what is hunting, if not an activity aimed not only at killing living creatures, but also at scattering tons of waste in the countryside with guns, with complete impunity?

Because it’s urgent, we’re calling on mayors to adopt the draft decree to drastically limit this practice and take action to protect the environment. To support us in this initiative, please forward this draft bylaw to your mayor! And to raise the voice of animals even higher, sign our petition for a radical reform of hunting!

Underground badger hunting: new victories and new hearings!

Underground badger hunting: new victories and new hearings!
19.02.2024
Underground badger hunting: new victories and new hearings!
Hunting

The fight against the supplementary period of underground venery is a long-distance race. After securing more than 30 emergency victories last year, which saved 4,000 badgers, the courts are now overwhelmingly confirming the illegality of all these decrees. In two new annulment decisions, judges in Nantes (Vendée) and Amiens (Oise) ruled that digging up badgers at this time of year was quite simply illegal. But the battle is far from over: next hearings are scheduled for March 7 and 12, at 10 and 10.30 a.m. respectively, at the administrative courts of Limoges and Nancy, for the 2023 supplementary periods in the Haute-Vienne and Meuse departments.

Update April 2, 2024

Two new victories against badger digging! In Haute-Vienne, hundreds of badgers were due to be killed in the spring of 2023. After the emergency suspension of the prefect’s decision, AVES, ASPAS and One Voice have just obtained its definitive annulment! In Meuse, the court also overturned the decree, which this time we had challenged on our own. Judgment after judgment, justice confirms it: in addition to being cruel, the supplementary underground hunting period is illegal.

Everywhere it has been suspended as a matter of urgency, underground hunting is about to be declared illegal for good

Last summer, while hunters were sharpening their knives, shovels and pickaxes to go hunting for badgers in their burrows, we launched a large-scale campaign against badger digging. Because it’s a cruel practice that we documented by infiltrating the community, and because it leads to the killing of newborn badgers every year – which is illegal, as the Conseil d’Etat has reminded us – the courts we appealed to suspended it as a matter of urgency in over 30 departments. Nearly 4,000 individuals have been saved as a result!

And the victories continue. In two new rulings, judges in Nantes and Amiens have joined those in Caen, Clermont-Ferrand and Limoges and overturned the prefect’s decrees for the Vendée (year 2020) and the Oise (year 2023) departments.

For the Amiens judge, the situation is very clear: until they are emancipated, badgers are “young” within the meaning of the law, and “the hunting method used involves the killing of the parents and the destruction of the burrow, or even the accidental injury of a young badger by the dogs“.

New hearings and new appeals in prospect

Having obtained the suspension of the orders in Haute-Vienne and Meuse last spring, the administrative courts of Limoges and Nancy will rule definitively on these cases at the end of two hearings scheduled for March 7, 2024 at 10 a.m. and March 12, 2023 at 10:30 a.m. respectively. 

Despite all these decisions, we know that the prefects, still hand in hand with the hunters, will no doubt once again authorize massacres in many departments. Everywhere, we’ll be speaking out on behalf of these individuals, killed for the sole pleasure of a few people. To help them, support us and sign the petition to put an end to underground hunting!

Leghold traps claim a new victim: we file a complaint for Snooky

Leghold traps claim a new victim: we file a complaint for Snooky
16.02.2024
Leghold traps claim a new victim: we file a complaint for Snooky
Hunting

On January 31, 2024, in the town of Couëron, Loire-Atlantique, passers-by discovered a cat with his leg caught in a leg-hold trap, a cruel and non-selective device that has been banned since 1995. This is not the first time one of our companions has fallen victim to these outdated tools. And that’s without taking into account all the wild animals that are deliberately targeted. We have filed a complaint for Snooky.

This January 2024 could have ended with the usual outdoor walks and indoor meals with his family. But Snooky had the misfortune to wander into the wrong garden and stumble across a leghold trap that closed violently on his left front paw. As he struggled, he found himself hanging against a low wall overlooking the street, his bruised limb still trapped on the other side of the railings. Neighbors discovered him on the morning of Wednesday, January 31, thanks to his frantic mewing. How long had he been in distress, wounded in his flesh? His worried humans hadn’t seen him since Monday evening…

After he arrived  at the vet in a state of shock and hypothermia, X-rays also revealed a dislocation of the phalanges and a suspected tear in the poor feline’s brachial plexus. Placed on a drip, Snooky eventually warmed up. But his injuries were irreversible. Two weeks after being taken into care, he had to have his middle and ring fingers amputated.

Traps sometimes illegal, always barbaric

Just a year ago, it was Cooper who found himself caught between the sharp teeth of a leghold trap. At the same time, Mani was discovered in agony, almost losing a leg to a snare. However, the older, unregistered version of the former device has been banned throughout the European Union for almost thirty years. How much longer will the rules be trampled all over ? And how long before these cruel, non-selective traps disappear and cease to deliver their victims to hours of intolerable suffering from which they cannot escape? For cats and dogs like Cooper, Mani and Snooky, but also for all the wild animals knowingly martyred, these practices must stop.

We join Snooky’s family and the association L’Arche de Ninie et ses Amis, who called us for help, in lodging a complaint. Together, let’s continue to defend the animals fallen victim to hunting by calling for a radical reform of this immoral hobby.

Common tenrecs: against animals and justice, little arrangements between the prefecture and hunters

Common tenrecs: against animals and justice, little arrangements between the prefecture and hunters
15.02.2024
Common tenrecs: against animals and justice, little arrangements between the prefecture and hunters
Hunting

Every year, between fifty and one hundred thousand common tenrecs are hunted on Reunion Island. Although the administrative court in Saint-Denis issued an emergency injunction suspending this announced massacre before it even began, a new decree is due to be adopted to authorize it in spite of everything. In addition to contempt for the animals, there is contempt for justice. And for good reason: it would appear that it was not the prefect, but the hunters themselves who held the pen… One Voice is calling for mobilization to oppose the massacre and these methods!

Update on 21/02/2024

After launching the public consultation for a new draft decree authorizing the hunting of common tenrecs, the prefecture closed it prematurely. But the collusion between the prefect and the hunters is total and, from now on, assumed: the authors of the draft decree and the presentation note are still… the director of the hunters’ federation and her lawyer!

The only difference, and it’s a big one: if this new decree is adopted, hunters will be allowed to kill common tenrecs every day of the week, instead of three days previously. To say no to these methods and to the extension of the number of hunting days, take part in the consultation!

Decree suspended, thousands of common tenrecs saved

Already victims of large-scale poaching, common tenrecs are killed for several months each year. While their newborns are still in their burrows, hunters set their dogs after them. Those who don’t die directly are picked up and killed later. It’s a sad fate not unlike that suffered by badgers and foxes in France’s underground venery.

Because tradition will never justify the violence inflicted on animals, we are fully mobilized wherever animals are targeted in its name. In December 2023, the Saint-Denis administrative court ruled in our favor, annulling the 2022 decree a posteriori. On February 12, it confirmed its position: the procedure for adopting the decree for 2024 was more than dubious, and the use of dogs directly endangers the pups. A relief for these animals and their defenders, on the island and everywhere else.

Never better served than by oneself: at the meeting, the hunters write the regulations themselves!

But the respite was short-lived. On February 12, a new draft decree was already online on the prefecture’s website. On reading the attached documents, we were doubly stunned to discover that the draft decree and its presentation note seemed not to have been drafted by the State services, which are supposed to be the guarantors of the general interest, but by… the director of the departmental hunters’ federation and her lawyer! We immediately had this information noted by a bailiff and will be contesting this new decision by all available means.

This is a shameless way for the prefect to allow the slaughter of these animals and silence the voices of all Reunion Islanders who are opposed to these practices. You too can make your discontent known by taking part in the public consultation!

Wolf park in the Sologne region: the investigating commissioner’s condescending opinion

Wolf park in the Sologne region: the investigating commissioner’s condescending opinion
14.02.2024
Wolf park in the Sologne region: the investigating commissioner’s condescending opinion
Wildlife

Last December, we voiced our opposition to two projects designed to keep wolves in captivity for profit. One of these projects was to use wolves for corporate seminars. Now that the public inquiry has been completed, the  investigating commissioner has issued a favorable opinion, despite a record level of opposition.

1,235 unfavorable opinions for 22 favorable opinions and 3 not applicable, according to the commissioner’s count. Although he acknowledges that “the number of comments is proof of proven opposition to the project” (sic), he nevertheless implies that the opponents were manipulated, having “followed a collective or directives” (sic).

In his view, it is simply inconceivable that the participants would have agreed with the arguments calling into question the park’s objective.

He doesn’t stop there, going so far as to question the validity of the opposition to this program of locking up wolves for paid coaching sessions. Which, as we all know, is a perfectly natural activity for these wild animals… “It seems that unfavorable observations are not explored in depth by anyone. The aspects that come up most often and quite laconically are above all the park’s small size, the lucrative aspect and the general local fright. This permanence of recurring aspects strikes me as rather odd.” (sic)

On the other hand, there was no criticism of the opinions in favor of the project…

Profit, always profit

As for the size of the enclosure – which, let’s not forget, is 4200 square meters for 6 wolves, who in the wild travel several dozen kilometers daily – we need to stop panicking, on the grounds that other zoos offer enclosures of this size, or even smaller! If others do it like that, then… One more, one less, it doesn’t matter.

Profits and entrepreneurial freedom are the main arguments used to validate the project: “[…] if the prefectoral authority authorizes the construction of the wolf park, Cerdon-en-Sologne will have an additional business and Wolf Project customers will be able to benefit from the good restaurant on Argent-sur-Sauldre road and the high class hotel next door.” (sic) So you’ll have a leg of lamb for lunch, before going to be psychoanalyzed by wolves who haven’t asked for anything and don’t know what they’re doing there?…

So much for the animals who will be exploited. Moreover, it is emphasized that they will come from captivity, and not be captured in their natural environment – glad to hear it! So it doesn’t really matter under what conditions they will be taken prisoner.

And to conclude on a high note, you who defend the wolves and are opposed to the project should know that you are “miscreants”, and that it is feared that you will be malicious “towards the company, its organizers, the animals and even the public attending a seminar”. (sic)

It’s now up to the prefecture to decide, and we hope that the prefect will respect the results of this consultation and the opinions of the public.

For our part, we continue, and always will, to oppose the enslavement of animals and to fight so that they can live free and in peace. As far as wolves are concerned, we’re continuing to fight for an end to their extermination. Help us by signing our petition.