Administrative fox beat hunts in the Indre-et-Loire department: One Voice attacks 12 prefectoral decrees

Administrative fox beat hunts in the Indre-et-Loire department: One Voice attacks 12 prefectoral decrees
26.07.2024
Administrative fox beat hunts in the Indre-et-Loire department: One Voice attacks 12 prefectoral decrees
Hunting

Between June 7 and July 9, 2024, the Prefect of Indre-et-Loire published 12 prefectoral decrees authorizing administrative fox beat hunts… several days after the operations. One Voice strongly condemns the harassment suffered by these animals and the illegal strategies employed by the State to prevent us from taking legal action. We are taking the decrees to the Orléans administrative court.

Killing foxes is one of the favorite activities of hunters, as they can indulge in it all year round and by any means, even the most cruel. And, as always, they can count on the State’s support to facilitate their hobby. Every year, they slaughter hundreds of thousands of foxes. And since rifle shooting is a bit monotonous, they also kill them as part of underground hunting, a horror we documented as part of our undercover investigation. As for the classification of foxes as ‘species likely to cause damage’ – which we attacked – it allows landowners to have them killed everywhere and (almost) all the time. 

But of course, all this is not enough for them: when all these possibilities are closed, there’s always the administrative beat hunts. After the Nièvre department, where we won our case in court, the prefect of Indre-et-Loire adopted no less than 12 decrees between June and July. While these decisions should be backed up by precise, detailed reasons, there’s nothing like that here. All in all, the State representative merely states that foxes are causing damage… As always, no data, no figures.

When the State hinders the action of associations

The scandal doesn’t stop there. As is often the case with administrative beat hunts, these orders were systematically published after the animals had been killed. It’s a strategy we’re all familiar with, designed to prevent any urgent challenge before the courts. So the animals have already been slaughtered by the time we can read about the orders. No harm seen, no harm done ! It’s high time we put a stop to these outrageous strategies.

As well as being valuable in their own right, foxes play a crucial role in the ecosystem, regulating populations of rodents and other small animals and limiting the spread of certain diseases. Their elimination jeopardizes fragile balances and has serious consequences for agriculture itself. Nothing will ever justify their being subjected to the vindictiveness of hunters.

For all these reasons, we are challenging the decisions of the Indre-et-Loire prefect. To speak up for foxes against those who want to eradicate them, sign our petitions to remove them from the ‘species likely to cause damage’ list and for a radical reform of hunting!

Underground hunting: in 2024, over 4,000 badgers already saved!

Underground hunting: in 2024, over 4,000 badgers already saved!
23.07.2024
Underground hunting: in 2024, over 4,000 badgers already saved!
Hunting

As in 2023, there’s a flurry of legal victories for badgers! Since the opening of the supplementary underground hunting periods on May 15, our appeals have led to the emergency suspension of this cruel hunt in no less than 13 departments, sparing more than 4,200 individuals. Meanwhile, little by little, the courts are definitively annulling the decrees adopted in 2023. With just a few days to go before the last hearings of the season, pressure has never been so strong on the State and hunters to put an end to this outdated practice!

Since the beginning of spring, thousands of individuals have been saved from the diggers’ shovels!

The latest victories: in the Eure-et-Loir, Haute-Vienne and Ille-et-Vilaine departments. While the diggers were preparing their shovels to track down and kill over 1,000 badgers (150, 700 and 200 respectively) for hours on end, our mobilization, with our partners ASPAS and AVES, once again bore fruit. The young badgers, only a few months old and just starting to emerge from their burrows, can now spend the summer in peace!

Despite their relentlessness, the authorities can no longer ignore the clear message from the courts. In the Cher department, after two successive rulings in our favor, the prefecture was about to thumb its nose at justice and the general interest and authorize the digging up of badgers again… but finally gave up, just a few days before the planned opening!

6 new supplementary periods from 2023 definitively declared illegal!

The fight against underground hunting is a real long-distance race. After emergency rulings suspending dozens of 2023 orders, the courts are gradually handing down their final rulings in all these cases. The results are final! Puy-de-Dôme, Corrèze, Rhône, Essonne, Morbihan, Côtes-d’Armor… between botched procedures and recognition of the illegal harm caused to young badgers by this outdated practice, the courts are cutting the hunters’ pseudo-arguments to shreds!

More than ever, these decisions highlight the total collusion between the hunting world and State departments. Special mention should be made of the Morbihan prefecture, which was sanctioned by the court for having allowed the hunters themselves to draw up the documents justifying the opening of the hunt… The bigger it is, the more it (no longer) is acceptable!

The next step in our fight is clear: to put an end to this illegal practice once and for all! To do this, support us by signing our petition for a radical reform of hunting, and for a pure and simple ban on underground hunting!

 

Upcoming hearings : 

• Deux-Sèvres (with AVES, ASPAS, LPO, Deux-Sèvres Nature Environnement and Vétérinaires pour la Biodiversité): July 22 at 3pm at the Poitiers administrative court;
• Cantal (with AVES, ASPAS and LPO Aura) and Puy-de-Dôme (with AVES, ASPAS, LPO Aura, FNE Puy-de-Dôme and FNE AURA): July 26 at 9:30 am at the administrative court in Clermont-Ferrand;
• Creuse and Corrèze (with AVES and ASPAS): August 2 at 11:30 am at the Limoges administrative court.

Orders suspended for the 2024 season (average number of badgers killed in previous seasons)

Allier (350)

Ardennes (90)

Aube (230)

Aveyron (300)

Calvados (200)

Cher (300)

Côtes-d’Armor (500)

Eure (500)

Eure-et-Loir (150)

Finistère (200)

Ille-et-Vilaine (200)

Morbihan (500)

Haute-Vienne (700)

We’re going back to court for 16,000 jackdaws targeted in Brittany

We’re going back to court for 16,000 jackdaws targeted in Brittany 15.07.2024
We’re going back to court for 16,000 jackdaws targeted in Brittany Hunting

In the Finistère and Côtes-d’Armor departments, 16,000 jackdaws are at risk of being culled in the coming months. Despite their protection at European and national level. Once again, we are attacking these decrees!

Jackdaws shot by the thousands: a protected species, really?

In the middle of the nesting season, even though the young have just been born and are still in their nests, hunters will be able to shoot thousands of jackdaws in the coming weeks. Even though all the studies show that culling is not an effective solution to the damage attributed to them. In fact, in the neighboring department of Morbihan, our unfailing commitment has led to a drastic reduction in the number of birds targeted.

Mass culling, a policy that doesn’t work

Cruel and ineffective: that’s how to describe the actions of the prefects of the Finistère and Côtes-d’Armor departments. Besides, they themselves admit that last year’s mass culls had no effect. Perhaps they should have listened to us, as we keep repeating: all scientific studies show that killing birds has no impact on reducing crop damage, either at plot level or at departmental level.

Basically, it’s all about appeasing farmers at little cost, since the lives of animals, even protected ones, are obviously of no value to the prefects. All the while knowing full well that the measures implemented will not work. One more tartuffery!

Shooting protected birds when other solutions exist: no!

There are a thousand ways of preventing birds from feeding in the fields, but none of them have been seriously studied. In the Finistère department, the prefect limits himself to pointing out that they would be too long and complex. Obstructing chimneys, where these birds like to nest, too long and too complex? It’s the last straw, given the ease with which thousands of protected birds can be slaughtered…

In 2022, our appeals saved almost 27,000 birds in extremis. Although last year the courts refused to suspend these decisions as a matter of urgency, our actions have nonetheless made it possible, year after year, to significantly reduce quotas. We are therefore once again taking legal action against the decrees issued by the prefects of the Finistère and Côtes-d’Armor departments!

Underground badger hunting: 10 new victories and more hearings to come!

Underground badger hunting: 10 new victories and more hearings to come!
Underground badger hunting: 10 new victories and more hearings to come!
Hunting

In the Cher, Loir-et-Cher, Eure-et-Loir, Loiret, Allier, Finistère, Corrèze, Calvados, Aube and Charente-Maritime departments, the courts have sided with the animals by cancelling or suspending the supplementary periods for underground venery set by the prefectures. Cornered in their burrows and seized by metal pliers before being finished off, the badgers who fall victim to this cruel practice are living a hellish existence, to which the courts are now objecting, all the more so as the young badgers, who are only a few months old at this time of year, are endangered and often illegally killed. On the strength of these court rulings, which protect animals in accordance with the law, we are announcing new hearings!

After suspension, orders definitively canceled

In 2023, we had 80% of the decrees allowing badgers to be hunted in their burrows from May to September, in addition to the rest of the year, suspended as a matter of urgency. Thanks to our legal action, more than 4,000 badgers were saved and were able to raise their young without fear. But we still had to obtain the annulment of these texts. This has now been achieved in the Loir-et-Cher, Eure-et-Loir and Loiret departments, where the Orléans administrative court ruled in our favor on June 20. At the same time, it also annulled the supplementary period authorized in the Cher department, this time in 2024, after it had been suspended!

In these four departments, the judges once again stressed that hunters’ practices were endangering young badgers, who are still vulnerable at this time of year and protected by law. They also pointed out that the prefecture had not provided sufficient evidence of the damage allegedly caused by these animals. And in the Finistère department, the decree authorizing a supplementary period of underground hunting for 2024 was annulled by the Rennes administrative court on July 5 for lack of a sufficient presentation note. So, permits to kill are handed out lightly…

Finally, on July 11, the Limoges administrative court also handed down its decision, annulling the 2023 decree by which the Corrèze prefect had set a supplementary period of underground hunting from June 15 to September 14, 2023.

With each new attempt by the State, we continue to attack in a hurry!

Wherever hunters insist on tormenting badgers all summer long, despite the illegality of the practice, we are there! That’s what we did when we joined forces with AVES and ASPAS to challenge the decree issued by the Charente-Maritime prefecture authorizing the digging up of badgers from June 1 to September 7. On July 1, the Poitiers administrative court suspended the order. Having heard our arguments, the judges insisted on the fact that the young were still far from being emancipated when they were weaned, and depended on their parents until the end of their first autumn. Killing their parents and destroying their burrows therefore put them in direct danger.

In the Allier department, the Clermont-Ferrand administrative court also suspended the decree issued on May 23, 2024 authorizing the digging up of badgers from July 1 to the general opening of the hunting season. This decision, handed down on July 5, also stressed that the supplementary period was “likely to harm young badgers who were not yet emancipated and the badger population in general”.

And thanks to the decision we obtained hand in hand with AVES and ASPAS from the Caen administrative court on July 10, badgers in the Calvados department, targeted by underground hunters since June 15, will once again be safe until September. Finally, on July 11, the administrative court of Châlons-en-Champagne also suspended the supplementary period of underground hunting that was underway in the Aube department.

Some courts still ignore the law

In the Mayenne and the Loire-Atlantique departments, the Nantes administrative court has remained deaf to our arguments. On July 1, it announced that it was rejecting our requests for suspension.

The same thing happened in the Ille-et-Vilaine department, where the court refused to annul the prefectural decree of January 2023 on the grounds that badgers had been observed during the counts… And this despite the fact that the French National Hunting and Wildlife Commission (ONCFS), which has since become the French Biodiversity Commission (OFB), considers that counting is not a reliable method for estimating the conservation status of their populations… 

In the Ardennes department, the administrative court of Châlons-en-Champagne also rejected the request for suspension that we had formulated alongside AVES and ASPAS concerning a supplementary period of underground hunting from June 1 to September 14. Delivered on July 8, its decision is surprising, to say the least: the judges have authorized hunters to kill badgers… with the exception of female badgers and any animal weighing less than 8 kilos. Are we to understand that they expect hunters to go into the forest with scales and weigh each individual before deciding whether to kill them or release them back into the ruins of their burrow? As underground hunters are never checked, they alone will decide how to proceed…

More hearings to come

We’re not stopping there. On July 11, we were present at the Orléans administrative court, alongside AVES and ASPAS, to seek an emergency suspension of the digging in the Eure-et-Loir department, as we had already succeeded in doing last year.

On July 15, at 11:20 a.m., we’ll be making the same request to the Limoges administrative court concerning the authorized stalking from June 15 to September 14 in the Haute-Vienne department. We’ll also be defending badgers on July 22 at 3pm, at the Poitiers administrative court for the Deux-Sèvres department, and finally on August 2 at 11:30am at the Limoges administrative court for the Creuse and Corrèze departments.

To support us in our fight for badgers, ask for a ban on underground hunting by signing our petition.

Photo : Nicolas Bazerque