Archives: News

Animals classified as species likely to cause damage: hunters’ black list

Animals classified as species likely to cause damage: hunters’ black list

Animals classified as species likely to cause damage: hunters’ black list
15.06.2023
Animals classified as species likely to cause damage: hunters’ black list
Wildlife

They were considered as ‘pests’. Nowadays they are a ‘species likely to cause damage’. Grouped under this label, as unfair as it is scandalous, foxes, martens, jays, and many other animals trying to survive in our threatened natural spaces are on death row. We will not let it happen.

A massacre is brewing in the hushed prefecture corridors. From the end of the summer, a new ministerial decree will come into force. A long black and white list of those condemned as a species likely to cause damage will be written in each department in France. With this law, numerous animals will be hunted down, trapped, and continuously exterminated all year long, outside of the periods that have already been authorised. This classification, concocted every three years by trappers, wolf hunters, and State representatives, is nothing but an outright extension of the right to kill being granted to hunters during the ‘normal’ opening season for hunting.

Species likely to cause damage: environmental nonsense

The term ‘pest’, toned down in the French with the use of an acronym [ESOD: Espèces Susceptibles d’Occasionner des Dégâts], is nonsense. In the wild, good and evil do not exist. And biodiversity, to be in a good state, needs everyone. Every animal has its place here. In one year, a single fox can eat between 3900 and 6300 rodents, which are lovers of agricultural crops. Foxes are health agents and also prevent the propagation of Lyme disease, carried by ticks. Yes, foxes play the role of a natural regulator, much more respectful of the environment than the spreading of polluting chemical products.

A death sentence played out in advance

But the real aim of this abominable list is to please the hunting lobby. They are involved at all stages of its development. Given by prefects at the Ministry of the Ecological Transition, the classification as a species likely to cause damage firstly passes through each Departmental Commission for Hunting and Wildlife, which gives its opinion or makes its own classification requests. What about animal welfare associations? Scientific opinions? Checks on the ground? There is nothing to support the validity of this arbitrary list, established on a simple declaration. The animals therefore have no one to defend them. No chance of getting out alive. Their fate is played out in advance.

We are fighting, department by department

To counter this decree, we have already been working for months on end. Legal experts dedicated to the issue are again contacting prefectures every day to obtain documents. As usual, administrations are dragging things out or not even responding. We are therefore forced to refer to the Committee for Access to Administrative Documents [Commission d’Accès aux Documents Administratifs (CADA)]. We know these time-consuming proceedings well. But we are belligerent. Each document received is analysed. We are checking every loophole, every inconsistency. To implement a counter-attack, we have also called on naturalists and we are relying on scientific studies and investigating on site, alongside our contacts on the ground.

‘Pests’, as they call them, are living, sensitive, intelligent beings. They all have their place within already weakened ecosystems. Do they have to perish, shot at point-blank range or trapped in vile cages, strangled, mutilated, in a state of unbearable stress? We oppose this with all our power.

participate in the public consultation

Translated from the French by Joely Justice

Peace for badgers this summer in fourteen departments!

Peace for badgers this summer in fourteen departments!

Peace for badgers this summer in fourteen departments!
15.06.2023
Peace for badgers this summer in fourteen departments!
Hunting

This year, in fourteen departments, badgers and their families will be left in peace in spring and summer. The decisions returned by administrative tribunals have just confirmed the arguments that we have been putting forward for years and have opened new perspectives in the fight to abolish underground hunting with hounds. Although a few judges still refuse to state the illegality of this type of hunting as being among one of the cruellest, the movement set in motion can only grow in the months and years to come.

Unprecedented for badgers and their cubs!

For several weeks, there have been a flurry of victories for badgers! In eighteen departments, we have attacked the opening of additional periods for underground hunting with hounds in spring and summer before the courts. The most recent suspensions to date: in Aube and Meuse, and in Loiret and Eure-et-Loir, where judges have swept away hunters’ and prefectures’ arguments.

These are added to the ten departments where the tribunals have said stop. Yes, badger cubs are dependant on their parents at this time of the year! Yes, underground hunting with hounds will inevitably lead to the young being killed if it is authorised in spring and summer in addition to the season when it is already allowed!

The Amiens Tribunal was not mistaken when qualifying this fatal hobby as ‘blind hunting’. And some jurisdictions have gone even further. The Poitiers Tribunal has also confirmed that which we have been stating for a long time: badgers must be considered as ‘young’ for quite some time, until they reach sexual maturity, and not, as stated by Prefectures whose laws are often blown up by hunting federations, until they are weaned (because it is only food!).

Thanks to the administrative proceedings urgently filed and pleaded, almost three thousand individuals will have their lives saved in the months to come. The young can grow peacefully without the fear of hunters’ shovels, guns, and knives.

… and a few defeats that raise questions

In Lyon (for the Rhône and Loire decrees), Bordeaux (Lot-et-Garonne), and Nantes (Vendée), urgent applications judges have decided to choose to take the opposite position to their colleagues in Limoges, Pau, Toulouse, Clermont-Ferrand, Caen, Amiens, Châlons-en-Champagne, and Nancy, however. And their decisions are (sadly) full of lessons.

For Vendée, the Nantes Administrative Tribunal indicated to us that for them, hunting with hounds does not pose a problem with regard to animal suffering because hunters would use ‘non-invasive pliers’ (as if that changes anything about the disastrous outcome of such a hunt) and, the cherry on the cake, that they can decide not to kill the animals that they have dragged out of the setts! All while admitting that those who will not benefit from this preferential treatment could be killed with a bladed weapon. Who could understand this?

When it comes to the Bordeaux Tribunal’s decision for Lot-et-Garonne, they surprised us because it looked exactly the same as the one returned a few days before by the Lyon one… Of course: the document header was that of the Lyon Administrative Tribunal! Corrected a few days later, this copy and paste nevertheless remains very concerning regarding the way in which rejection decisions are made by judges, given that they are not even written on a case-by-case basis.

Our fight for badgers is far from over

With FNE, the LPO, and Animal Cross, we have attacked Savoie’s decree: the hearing is on 16 June at 9:30am at the Grenoble Administrative Tribunal.
For Haute-Loire, AVES is joining this coalition and the hearing will take place on 20 June at 9:30am in Clermont-Ferrand.
For Aisne, along with AVES once again, we will defend the badgers on 16 June at 9:30am in Amiens.
Finally, we will be present alone in Dijon on 23 June at 2:15pm for Saône-et-Loire.

With a view to protecting badgers and for a ban on underground hunting with hounds thanks to a radical reform on hunting (progress that you can support by signing our petitions), we will continue to fight on local, national, and international levels.

With your help, we will pursue our legal attack as completely and thoroughly as necessary. Thanks to your support, we will not let it happen and we will fight until the end for badgers!

I support One Voice’s fight for badgers

Translated from the French by Joely Justice

Fur: more than 1,500,000 signatures to put an end to this industry in Europe!

Fur: more than 1,500,000 signatures to put an end to this industry in Europe!

Fur: more than 1,500,000 signatures to put an end to this industry in Europe!
14.06.2023
Fur: more than 1,500,000 signatures to put an end to this industry in Europe!
Fashion

The fight against fur has taken a decisive turn. The Fur Free Europe European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) has been undertaken to ban the production, importation, and marketing of fur in the European Union. The signatures of 1,502,319 citizens have been validated. This is a movement that seems to be being echoed on a global level, since a bill has just been presented in the United States to put an end to breeding mink on American soil due to health risks.

Fur farms: places of misery

Minks are territorial animals. In breeding farms, they are enclosed with several in each minuscule mesh cage with no access to water and they show their discontent by developing self-mutilation and often cannibalistic behaviours.

Whether its the horror that the animals are subjected to or the soil pollution and the health hazards that these breeding farms cause, they must be banned throughout the European Union.

A victorious fight which will have taken years in France

Thanks to our repeated investigations into mink breeding farms in France published in 2017, 2019, and 2020 and presented to European parliamentarians, we have repeatedly alerted the public to the conditions in fur farms.
We have also written to the prefects concerned and to the Ministry for the Ecological Transition. This work, led relentlessly, has ultimately allowed a ban on all farms breeding wild animals for their fur in our country.

Fur farms: hotbeds for contamination

At the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, we had confirmation that breeding farms were dangerous reservoirs for variants
because of potential vectors of mutations of the virus transmissible to humans due to a lack of hygiene, cramped conditions, and the proximity of the cages. This has led to the slaughter of millions of mink, particularly in Denmark and the Netherlands, and even in France. We have launched a petition addressed to G20 members to ask for the urgent closure of all European breeding farms and warned the AgriPêche [Agriculture-Fishing] Council on this subject, who have not moved one bit on this issue.

Others take their responsibilities much more seriously: this is exactly what was proposed today by an American democrat after the confirmation of the outbreaks of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) in 18 breeding farms in the United States. Its bill was just filed scarcely a few days ago and intends to ban fur farms within a year by leaning on the issues of public health that they represent.

Prevent production from being relocated

The whole point of this European Initiative is to extend the ban obtained in France at the end of 2021 to all member countries, as remains to be done in Finland, Lithuania, and Romania. But it is also to avoid production being moved abroad, for example to China. We must therefore fight to obtain a ban on importations and marketing of fur in any member State.

With the validation of the signature stage having finished, it goes to the European Commission!

The Fur Free Europe ECI, led by Eurogroup for Animals and supported by One Voice and its partners from the Fur Free Alliance, has just had more than one and a half million European Citizens’ signatures validated, who are thus supporting this request. They are therefore part of a process of participating in democracy in favour of animals, which really gives hope!

To get the production, importation, and marketing of fur banned in the European Union, we must meet with members of the European Commission before the start of the summer. And thus, we can be heard by the European Parliament from next October and obtain a definitive response from the Commission before 2024.

Translated from the French by Joely Justice

Wolf defence associations respond to the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté farmers’ lobby

On 26 May 2023, the Regional Chamber of Agriculture of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, three of the main agricultural syndicates in the region (FRSEA, JA, CR), and around ten other organisations published a press release entitled “Farmers or wolves: the Government must choose”. Through this, the authors intend to convince the French State to authorise a more systematic appeal for shooting wolves, under the pretext that cohabitation with the large predator would be impossible, all while touting the alleged benefits of a production-driven agricultural model that is partly responsible for the current ecological and climatic crisis. Such statements clearly have no scientific foundation and, through this document, we intend to re-establish a few facts.