News Archive - Page 50 of 152

Deadly floods in India: our veterinary team comes to the rescue of animals in distress

Deadly floods in India: our veterinary team comes to the rescue of animals in distress
23.10.2023
India
Deadly floods in India: our veterinary team comes to the rescue of animals in distress
Domestic animals

On 4 October 2023, the overflowing of a lake led to significant floods in the Mangan district of Sikkim in the north-east of India. Torrents of water poured into several towns in the region and caused dozens of human deaths, destroyed houses and bridges, damaged roads… At the site, our rescue centre and clinic rallied to ensure the safety of animals that were themselves victims of this catastrophe.

In the towns engulfed in water, while the inhabitants tried to escape, many animals were swept away by the current or abandoned in the middle of the houses that had been ripped apart and the debris. The situation is critical for them too, especially given that the food supply is insufficient.

We provided first aid on the ground

Local feeders were relieved to see members of our Kalimpong-Darjeeling rescue centre arrive. From the day following the catastrophe, our team visited different towns affected to feed the dogs that were mad with hunger. There, they discovered a mother and her young, just four days old. After having benefited from the protection of an inhabitant who lived near the water’s edge, the family needed to be taken care of. So we took them to our rescue centre without delay.

In Rangpo, we also led a vaccination campaign against rabies, a fight that we have been leading since we first set ourselves up in the region. Many stray dogs received their first dose, while others were able to be treated for skin diseases. While they all gathered, once treated, around bowls full of food, we distributed creams and medications to the inhabitants to take care of their four-legged friends.

Our commitment in India goes back a long way

Our efforts do not stop there and the animals saved will be the subject of a follow-up by our team, whose fight is not new. At the start of the 2000s, chaperones based in Kalimpong had already been successful in putting an end to dogs being poisoned with strychnine, a cruel substance that leaves them in pain for hours before taking their lives through atrocious suffering. By eradicating rabies, they managed to silence the fear and violence that stray dogs instilled in those living in the region.

In 2002, we rolled this action out in the city of Darjeeling by buying some land and building a rescue centre and clinic there. Since, our Kalimpong-Darjeeling team has welcomed, cared for, and neutered thousands of dogs and taken charge of many cats that are victims of persecution. The majority of them have been adopted, while others have found their place alongside us and stayed there. We also go to the surrounding villages to vaccinate and treat the animals of residents who cannot come to us, while raising awareness about their protection.

In a period of crisis, we remain fully mobilised to give support and care to animals from north-east India. To fight for them alongside us, you can sponsor Ron, Luna, and Juno, who have found their safe haven in Darjeeling.

Translated from the French by Joely Justice

Traditional hunting: the government chooses to force their way through a hidden door

Traditional hunting: the government chooses to force their way through a hidden door
20.10.2023
France
Traditional hunting: the government chooses to force their way through a hidden door
Wildlife

We thought they had been buried once and for all, but the government has got their shovel out to give them a second chance. Since 2018, dozens of legal decisions have proven us right and have meant the massacring of hundreds of thousands of birds could have been avoided. But the government will stop at nothing to please hunters. Disguised as ‘scientific experiments’ (that do nothing to advance science, only hunting), they decided to pave the way for the return of cages, nets, and decoys in our countryside. While lapwings, golden plovers, and even field larks already spend their lives avoiding being shot, we will do all we can to get these decrees cancelled and so that this cruel hunting remains a relic of a bygone past.

Unbearable suffering for animals in the name of ‘tradition’

A hunter-trapper traps a small field lark that is struggling, hooking a small string around its leg or wing and shutting it into a cage before going into hiding. Then he pulls on the string. The pain makes the lark screech, it tries to escape but it is held fast by the trap. Hearing its cries, dozens of other larks – and other species – fly to its rescue. It is at that moment when the trap closes up: nets fall on both sides, trapping them all without distinction. The selected individuals are then killed one by one, methodically, and never mind if the others are injured in the process…

In the name of ‘tradition’, hunting with glue, cages, nets, or decoys was still authorised until recently. But that was without including our action (and that of the LPO, with whom we have fought alongside with the same perspective). Since 2021, One Voice has obtained a ruling by the European Union Court of Justice, followed by many rulings by the State Council, which have all proven us right: these types of hunting are quite simply against the ‘Birds’ Directive. Although glue hunting is nothing but a sad memory, the government is persisting and the legal battle continues for other types of hunting. In October 2022, the State Council urgently suspended the hunting of field larks with nets and cages in the south-west. We are awaiting the final ruling. And in May last year, they even insisted that the government revoke the 1989 decrees authorising the very principle of these hunts.

But the minister is clearly ready to do anything to please this lobby and does not hesitate to brush aside legal decisions from the highest of administrative authorities in the country to allow them to kill animals.

Hunters, these well-known ‘scientists’, are judge and jury!

To allow the killing of several thousand more birds, the government has, or will, launch an ‘experiment’ in five departments to show that these types of hunting are selective. And this even though, regarding net and cage hunting, the State Council has already settled the matter. And of course, these experiments will be led by… the departmental hunters’ federations. You are never served better than when it is by yourself, right! And they pride themselves on being great scientists too…

No need to be a specialist to clearly see that these experiments are only scientific in name. Led by hunters for hunters, this masquerade has a sole aim: to pave the way for the return of nets, decoys, and cages. In Ardennes, there are no less than 500 lapwings that will therefore be captured, and 15 golden plovers. In Lot-et-Garonne, 1000 field larks will end up in nets and cages. Three other departments (Gironde, Landes, and the Pyrénées-Atlantiques) are still to publish their decrees. We are planning to attack them too.

They will hide behind ‘science’, they will say that birds will not be killed, and they will allude to ‘tradition’. But no matter: we will always give these animals, and the 83% of French people who want these practices to disappear, (Ipsos/One Voice survey 2022) a voice against these barbaric types of hunting. We are attacking these decrees and will be at the Châlons-en-Champagne Administrative Tribunal on 26 October at 11:30am (for Ardennes)

Translated from the French by Joely Justice

Moana is dead: we are filing a lawsuit and asking for access to the autopsy

Moana is dead: we are filing a lawsuit and asking for access to the autopsy
18.10.2023
Alpes-Maritimes
Moana is dead: we are filing a lawsuit and asking for access to the autopsy
Exploitation for shows

Anger, astonishment… this is how Moana’s death makes us feel. It has been years since One Voice alerted public powers and the legal system of the ordeal that he was living through alongside Inouk, Wikie, and Keijo. We are launching legal proceedings and asking for access to this very young orca’s autopsy. Responsibility must be clearly established and the three other orcas must be put into a safe place.

Moana: an adolescent that was born and then died despite our warning calls

Today, Wikie has lost his favourite son, at the age of just 12 years. Keijo has seen his big brother die. It is no longer possible to leave the three orcas that are left in their current state. Inouk, whose health is extremely worrying, Wikie, and Keijo, who since this summer have shown visible signs of their poor condition, must be taken care of immediately.

For years, we have been documenting and condemning the worrying declining state of the pools

Today, we are calling on Christophe Béchu and Sarah El Haïry to finally intervene for these precious animals, whose high decree of evolution is no longer a mystery. For two years, we have been asking the Ministry of Ecology to discuss existing solutions for these orcas born in France.

We are again proposing to the Ministry and to Marineland that specialist orca veterinarians intervene at the poolside while there is still time. And we are begging the State to immediately stop any provision of an export permit. These are our orcas, they are their responsibility. Let this indecent silence end, allowing scandalous commercial transactions to happen off the back of this family, the only one in captivity in the world.

Appropriate care, along with the best specialists in the world, and finally they will have a future.

One Voice is demanding justice for Moana and asking that his family be urgently taken care of

Today, we are going to publish an article, supported by scientific studies, presenting the importance of not separating the orcas kept at Marineland in Antibes, because such separation of a familial group could mean such violence and stress that it could prove fatal for these fragile orcas. In September, we finally managed to get an independent expert assessment ordered by the Aix-en-Provence Court of Appeal, just for Moana and his uncle Inouk.

The false pretences of the dolphinarium that pretends to be transparent when they are right in front of you

Today, Marineland is acting as though they are being transparent, but why did they fight our request for an independent expert assessment? Why have we had to battle inch by inch for what, in so many other cases, is considered a formality?

A specialist orca veterinarian, having worked for another dolphinarium, went there for us two weeks ago, and his new report is unequivocal: the state of the four orcas is worrying. The proof is definitive now.

In light of these new observations, we have filed a request for protective emergency interim proceedings at the Nice Administrative Tribunal. Because without this, it is impossible to assure us that the orcas will not be sent to Japan before the expert assessment ordered by the Aix-en-Provence Court of Appeal can be carried out.

Seeing orcas die while yelling into the abyss

We have been right from the start, and this gives us no satisfaction: Moana was in danger, he was wasting away, his skin, the sudden collapse of his dorsal fin, his sterotyped behaviour and the state of his teeth… all expressing his distress. It was nothing more than a cry for help, and we were the only ones to carry his clear, distinct, and vivacious voice. This evening, our hearts are full of rage. The Ministry of Ecology has not lifted a finger to help him, Inouk, Keijo, or Wikie.

The 2021 law against mistreatment supposed to protect these giants of the ocean is nothing but smoke and mirrors; unfortunately, we were not wrong.

We are launching legal proceedings in which we are asking to receive the autopsy report and for specialists to be given immediate access to the orcas.
We remain more determined than ever to try everything we can for Inouk, Wikie, and Keijo.

Translated from the French by Joely Justice

Dogs and animal testing: our report makes the industry cringe

Dogs and animal testing: our report makes the industry cringe
18.10.2023
France
Dogs and animal testing: our report makes the industry cringe
Animal testing

For Gircor (an animal testing lobby in France), our report on the use of dogs by laboratories is only a “disorderly enumeration of untruths and questions science, above all playing on emotions”. A new attempt to discredit us, just as vain and off-topic as the previous ones, from an organisation that feels the tide changing.

(Rigorously) selected excerpts

They learnt some lessons from our response to their comment on our report regarding testing on primates. In their new ‘fact check’, Gircor has replaced the charming expression “Selected excerpts!” with a more serious reference to “Brandolini’s law” – according to which it takes more energy to discredit patter than it does to produce it. This is why this lobby has carefully chosen the parts that interested them…

After all, why talk about the deplorable results of the inspections and almost non-existent sanctions? This only motivates a good quarter of the claims expressed in our report! And it would surely have been inappropriate to comment on our comments about the Marshall BioResources company (leader of the dog “market” for laboratories and a member of Gircor) – to which we have nevertheless exclusively devoted four pages of the report.

It was surely better to report on the inadequacy of our examples of the degrees of suffering. As for them, the lobby prefers to highlight the “vast majority of mild/moderate procedures”… by forgetting to specify what these terms mean in concrete terms.

Even logic is not their forte

Helping their self-promotion, the “fact-check” refers to a list of Nobel Prizes which are “the result of research involving animals”. And if so many Nobel prizes involve animal testing, that is because science could not have progressed without it… right? In fact, with the same reasoning, the fact that an overwhelming majority of these prizes have been given to men would mean that women would be incapable of leading progress in science without men, even if they were given the means to do so – which, obviously, is not true.

But we should not expect anything more from an organisation that accuses us of “playing on emotions” a few days after having celebrated the shameful propaganda by Mauritian breeders who supply laboratories around the world with macaques and play on fear to manipulate public opinion.

The cherry on the cake: our report was inspired by “researchers… in moral philosophy” (who Gircor clearly do not consider to be “thorough” experts). Why? Because the two pages that are dedicated to ethics actually cite… ethics specialists: that is to say, specialists in moral philosophy.

You can help us

To help dogs, you can act by signing our petitions for an end to their use by laboratories and for the closure of the Marshall BioResources breeding farm in Mézilles.

P.S: while it is not customary, we thank Gircor for the information it communicated relating to Finland in its article. It is better than nothing.

Translated from the French by Joely Justice

Stuffed animal trafficking: three men are going before the Nancy Legal Tribunal

Stuffed animal trafficking: three men are going before the Nancy Legal Tribunal
18.10.2023
France
Stuffed animal trafficking: three men are going before the Nancy Legal Tribunal
Wildlife

It is not the season for animal trafficking. This abominable practice continues to thrive all the time, all year round, everywhere. Most often remaining in the shadows of the networks that cover them, traffickers enjoy unbearable impunity. Fortunately, their sordid and illegal activities are sometimes brought to light. A poacher-dealer and two of his buyers from eastern France had to answer for their actions before the Nancy magistrates’ court on October 13. One Voice was the plaintiff.

Circuses and poaching at the heart of concealing skins for taxidermists to use

This case is sadly reminiscent of the one linked to the trainers from Nouveau Cirque Triomphe as well as the taxidermist that our investigation led us to, and for which a case will once again be brought before the courts on 18 October in Grenoble. Coming from circuses, breeding farms, zoos, or trophy hunts, lions, tigers, giraffes, and monkeys in particular are the subject of a very lucrative underground trade. To fight against this, we have successfully attacked the ministerial decree allowing the relaxation of authorisations for keeping wild animals.

Once again, here is a perfect example of the fact that wild animals never benefit from any respite. At any moment, they can find themselves torn from their natural environment. Even when they are not killed immediately, it won’t be long before there is no one to witness their ordeal. Disorientated and terrorised, they find themselves far from their own kind, in hostile territory, kept in conditions that are not compatible with their needs, and with the sole aim of waiting for death.

The sole objective of these intolerable massacres is to satisfy the morbid aesthetic tastes of a few people and to increase the wealth of others who, devoid of empathy, would trade anything as long as it makes them money.

An investigation with a thousand twists and turns

The investigation led by the OFB brought to light large-scale trafficking. More than 500 skins of ‘stuffed’ animals from species as varied as they are rare have been rescued throughout the whole of France.
The defendants were tried last Friday for the purchase, importation, keeping, and unauthorised transfer of CITES and protected species non-domestic animal species. Two of them were buyers, and the third a dealer and poacher.

Of course, we were there to demand justice for all of the animals sacrificed at the altar of profit.

The deliberation is set for 18 October. We hope that the decision will live up to our expectations. It is high time that these animals’ daily lives are not fear-filled for traffickers’ gain!

Translated from the French by Joely Justice

The fight for the lions at the Nouveau Cirque Triomphe continues in Grenoble

The fight for the lions at the Nouveau Cirque Triomphe continues in Grenoble
17.10.2023
France
The fight for the lions at the Nouveau Cirque Triomphe continues in Grenoble
Exploitation for shows

One Voice has been fighting for more than five years against Joseph and Stéphane Gougeon, the owners of the Nouveau Cirque Triomphe, and Guy Mordon, to stop their sleights of hand from allowing them to illegally keep animals, make them reproduce, and traffic them in complete peace. A new hearing is set at the Grenoble Court of Appeal on 18 October 2023 at 2pm.

After a report and an initial decision, Stéphane Gougeon appealed the ruling that sentenced him to a suspended prison sentence because he illegally detained Tarzan the lion at the Nouveau Cirque Triomphe. However, the calls have not brought any luck to the Gougeon family: the latest, carried out by Steve, the trainer of Jon and the lionesses Céleste, Patty, Hanna, and Marli at the Cirque de Paris, confirmed on 21 August that his competency certificate had been withdrawn. Faced with the deterioration in the state of health and the injuries of the four lionesses, the judge couldn’t fail to note the trainer’s inability to take care of animals!

We hope that this conclusion will also be upheld for Stéphane, another circus performer in the family! In fact, we have been condemning his schemes since the investigation started in 2018. We have also revealed over the years that the three men (Joseph, Stéphane, and Guy Mordon, respectively a cousin and maternal uncle) were keeping lions illegally, without having the necessary documents to exploit them (or competency certificates, or authorisation to open). We brought to light the identical identification of two lions (Tarzan was identified as being Jon), the breeding happening, as well as the existence of trafficking, with the resale of a lion to an unauthorised taxidermist.

A sentencing, an acquittal, and a dismissed case

Despite numerous damning elements, the magistrates’ court only recognised that Tarzan was kept illegally. Stéphane Gougeon was the only one of the three to be convicted: a four-month suspended prison sentence.

And it is not the law of 30 November 2021 aiming to fight against animal mistreatment that will allow us to obtain more significant punishments. In fact, although the law aims to put an end to wild animals being kept in travelling circuses, it allows them to keep their animals if they decide to settle. We have therefore attacked the decree which takes an initial step in this direction by establishing an equivalence between circus competency certificates and those for zoos, and the government’s false pretences on this issue.

A new hearing that must close the case file

We will be present on 18 October 2023 at 2pm at the Grenoble Court of Appeal to, once again, get animals’ voices heard and to obtain – we hope – a firm and definitive punishment against the actions of Stéphane Gougeon, the Nouveau Cirque Triomphe trainer.

Translated from the French by Joely Justice

Wolves: Coordination Rurale (CR87) in Haute-Vienne tries to silence One Voice by banning a protest

Wolves: Coordination Rurale (CR87) in Haute-Vienne tries to silence One Voice by banning a protest
12.10.2023
Haute-Vienne
Wolves: Coordination Rurale (CR87) in Haute-Vienne tries to silence One Voice by banning a protest
Wildlife

To demand an end to the massacring of wolves in our country, One Voice is organising militant action in different towns in France throughout the month of October.On Saturday 14 October in Limoges, an event has been planned by our volunteers to inform the public on wolves, their sensitivity, their intelligence, their way of life, and the importance of their place in biodiversity. The Coordination Rurale in Haute-Vienne, terrified by a stand raising awareness, tried to get our protest banned using press releases. We wish them luck because One Voice has never backed down when it comes to defending wolves.

Packs are in reality true families, where each individual has its role to play for the survival of each of them. Contrary to what those who oppose them try to make people believe by demonising them, wolves do not represent a danger for humans: they try to avoid them as much as possible.

But clearly, at the CR87, rather than informing, they persist in spreading the same perpetual twaddle about wolves. Even when we give free rein to a boundless imagination, everyone will be able to read that “these wolves have been released, and even pro-wolf associations recognised the existence of clandestine breeding operations that were completely impenetrable and difficult to manage”.

A notoriously anti-wolf union

This same group that opposes an educational protest planned and authorised by the prefecture do not hesitate to incite their members to commit crimes. Thus, at the end of 2021, the Coordination Rurale 87 openly called for the poaching of wolves! “In Haute-Vienne, we have pellets and poison and will regulate ourselves!”, their representative said at the time in the press.

We will not give in to this attempt at intimidation by a deadly lobby, who each year send more than a thousand animals to the abattoir in France and campaign to exterminate wolves that are already in a critically vulnerable situation. We will be in Limoges next Saturday to defend their right to live in peace. 138 of them have already been slaughtered this year, 6 others poached, and unfortunately the massacre is not over. The State has effectively reviewed and increased the maximum number of exceptional shots, authorising the killing of 209 individuals in 2023. Without counting those who die ‘accidentally’ due to purely human reasons: traffic, trapping…

Come and meet us in Amiens (80), Digne-les-Bains (04), Montpellier (34), Limoges (87), Metz (57), Aix-en-Provence (13), Troyes (10), Flers (14) ; Rouen (76) ; Nantes (44), Bar-Le-Duc (55), and Strasbourg (67). While waiting for an end to shooting, sign our petition to ask that wolves be respected.

Translated from the French by Joely Justice

Chronic pain and depression: ‘moderate’ suffering for animals?

Chronic pain and depression: ‘moderate’ suffering for animals?
12.10.2023
France
Chronic pain and depression: ‘moderate’ suffering for animals?
Animal testing

When a laboratory wants to implement animal testing, they must indicate to what degree the animals will suffer (called the ‘degree of severity’). The Ministry for Research, despite several exchanges with us, finds it normal that projects involving inflicting chronic pain and an anxious-depressive state on rodents are classified in the ‘moderate’ category. One Voice is seriously considering going further to make their voices heard.

Our first letter went out in April 2023. Three projects that had just been approved jumped out at us. For one, whose classification as ‘non-recovery’ was clearly wrong (fish exposed to pollutants while fully awake), the Ministry has noticed its error and has simply corrected the classification – without explaining how such a major error was able to pass through the filters of the ‘ethical committees’ and APAFiS National Services in charge of project authorisation.

As for the others, they didn’t give up: depression, chronic pain… regardless, these experiments would be classified as ‘moderate’ or even ‘mild’. A well-practised classification to reassure the public… but we will not give in one bit.

‘Mild’ injections with psychotropic drugs and inappropriate tests

The second project, classified as ‘mild’, specifically involved repeated injections of psychotropic drugs into the abdomens of baby mice. We spotted mentions of anxiety and depression measuring lasting five to ten minutes – which immediately made us think of the forced swimming test, still used despite very questionable scientific interest and widespread public opposition.

According to the Ministry, forced swimming would not be used in this project. In fact, “the test used to evaluate depression is the Classic Labyrinth Test”. Here is another problem. In fact, this test is normally used to measure anxiety, and not depression at all, in rodents. Did the research team blindly choose its tests without checking what they were supposed to be used for? Another letter from us – as yet with no response.

Chronic pain: ‘moderate’?

The third project, classified as ‘moderate’, is even worse, with more than 1000 baby mice being subjected to chronic pain for five to twelve weeks. In response to our report, we simply read that the surgery (done to induce chronic pain) is carried out under anaesthesia and that cut-off points are defined to kill the animals if they suffer too much. But also that “in this model of neuropathy, animals show no clinical signs of severe pain”.

The Ministry has clearly forgotten the regulations that they wrote and passed themselves more than ten years ago – which state that any chronic suffering should be classified as ‘severe’. Again, we received no response.

Sweet nothings to reassure the public

Meanwhile, other experiments received approval from the APAFiS Service to make animals suffer and to kill them. And as part of the ‘moderate’ group, we found even more aberrations that we have also reported. Thus, in one project, almost 200 mice will be made to be stressed by repeated electric shocks, then kept in individual cages for weeks to study post-traumatic stress. In another, more than 500 rodents will endure “chronic pain along with the development of anxious-depressive problems” and electrodes being implanted into their skulls.

This is no laughing matter when each year we read in statistics published by public powers that for “all species combined, the least restrictive procedures, that is to say moderate or mild classifications, are the most numerous”. With the number of ‘mild’ projects decreasing while ‘moderate’ experiments increase year upon year, we understand why the industry tries to manipulate public opinion, even when three quarters of French people are opposed to these practices. Experiments that are done, still, to the detriment of animals that are victims of laboratories.

For a more precise look at the statistics in animal testing and the suffering endured by animals, our analytical website allows a better idea of the reality.

Translated from the French by Joely Justice

Hearing of 12 October 2023: wood pigeons in the Pyrenees victims of hunting deserve a clear defence

Hearing of 12 October 2023: wood pigeons in the Pyrenees victims of hunting deserve a clear defence
11.10.2023
Pyrénées
Hearing of 12 October 2023: wood pigeons in the Pyrenees victims of hunting deserve a clear defence
Wildlife

In March 2022, we were successful in partially suspending a decree by the Aude Prefecture authorising the slaughter of wood pigeons in the middle of their migratory period. On 12 October 2023, we will be at the Montpellier Administrative Tribunal to ask for the cancellation of this same law and to protect these animals in the long term. The persecution of these birds, already victims of intensive farming and growing urbanisation, must stop.

Wood pigeons, wild geese, rooks and carrion crows, and even grey partridges and larks… One Voice has been fighting for years for all birds that are subjected to hunters’ destructive obsession, even when their survival is already endangered by human activities. It is hard to believe that these trigger-happy people will only stop when nature is silent… We will never accept these killings.

Wood pigeons used as targets

By classifying wood pigeons as a ‘species likely to cause damage’, the Aude Prefecture authorised shots to start again on 20 February 2022, ten days after the end of the hunting season and in the middle of the spring migration. A law that trampled all over the European ‘Birds’ Directive in addition to providing no proof of the damage supposedly caused to crops.

These nomads, simply passing through our coastal skies on their return from Spain, will be killed before even being able to land on French soil. We were also successful in partially suspending this decree, whose sole aim was to prolong a deadly hobby, and we have been asking for a year and a half that it be annulled to be able to draw a line under this case once and for all.

Hunters want to replace the beating of wings with the whistling of bullets… we oppose this!

Already in 2018, the Ministry of the Ecological Transition, whose complacency towards our opponents is more a rule than an exception, had given them authorisation on a plate to kill greylag geese flying through our skies from February onwards.

For wood pigeons in the Pyrenees, we will be at the Montpellier Administrative Tribunal on 12 October 2023 for the hearing, starting at 10am.

Translated from the French by Joely Justice

Justice: six associations are filing a plea against marmot and mountain hare hunting in Savoie

Justice: six associations are filing a plea against marmot and mountain hare hunting in Savoie
11.10.2023
Savoie
Justice: six associations are filing a plea against marmot and mountain hare hunting in Savoie
Wildlife

The Association Justice Animaux Savoie (AJAS), ASPAS, Animal Cross, AVES France, FNE Savoie, and One Voice are filing a plea against the prefectural decree authorising the hunting of marmots and mountain hares, emblematic animals in the Alps. These two species, protected by the Bern Convention, are in decline due to the destruction of their reproduction habitat and climate change. However, hunting them is still authorised! An interim hearing has been set in the coming days in Grenoble while a petition having gained almost 80,000 signatures is asking the government for a pure and simple ban on hunting marmots throughout the country.

A scandalous type of hunting on species that are protected and are threatened by global warming

Banned since 1992 in Italy, hunting marmots is still allowed in France where it caused the death of 427 animals in Savoie last year. Marmots are, however, protected by Annex III of the Bern Convention. Their ‘management’ must therefore “be regulated in order to keep populations out of danger”. The problem: to this day, there has not been an official count allowing us to know the exact state of their population, and this lack of knowledge is used to continue to authorise them being hunted.

However, marmots are doing badly as they are victims of the effects of global warming and many scientists are sounding the alarm, such as the Vanoise Scientific Council in the statement that they delivered in May 2023. An alarming finding also for mountain hares since, in 2017, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) revised their status in order to classify them as ‘near threatened’ given the marked decline in their population in the country.

A trophy hunt far from the discourse of hunters as “the first ecologists of France”

Hare hunting joins that of 24 species with an unfavourable conservation status in France, or 27% of huntable species. In reality, far from being the first ecologists in France, hunters are gravediggers for biodiversity. They hunt for pleasure and with a taste for trophies, with marmots being no exception. But French people are not fooled.

The Savoie Prefect authorised marmot hunting in opposition to citizens’ views

As part of the public consultation prior to the publication of the 2023-2024 hunting plan for Savoie, 88 citizens expressed that they were explicitly against this practice. The Prefect was thus forced to justify himself, putting forward arguments each more absurd than the last! According to the Prefecture’s official documentation, “burrows dug in meadows cause injuries to cattle, sometimes to farmers with sprains, breakage of mowing equipment, damage to watering hoses, etc..” Furthermore, in the document presented following the public consultation by the Savoie Prefect, there is no official count allowing us to know the exact state of the mountain hare and marmot populations. Neither Prefects nor hunters are above the law, which is why our associations have decided to file an appeal against the prefectural decree allowing the hunting of marmots and hares in 2023.

Legal action and a petition to the government

While these practices are not banned on a national level, each Prefect can decide arbitrarily whether or not to authorise these types of hunting. This is the reason why our associations have been rallying in a forum since 2022 to ask for an end to marmot hunting. The aim? To go from 78,000 to 100,000 signatures on the petition in order to get the government to ban marmot hunting throughout France once and for all.

Translated from the French by Joely Justice