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A dying fox, a walker threatened: will the ‘trapper’ soon be identified?

A dying fox, a walker threatened: will the ‘trapper’ soon be identified?
10.01.2023
A dying fox, a walker threatened: will the ‘trapper’ soon be identified?
Hunting

After having received a witness statement from a shocked walker, and faced with the initial lack of reaction from the authorities, we have intervened to bring the unacceptable behaviour of a fox trapper, who has openly threatened this whistle-blower and subjected a fox to particularly cruel acts before killing it, to their attention. While these cousins of dogs are victims of an unbearable persecution, we will remain fully committed so that the investigation will allow the suspect to be identified and brought to justice.

One Voice’s action, crucial to launch the investigation

At the beginning of December, during a walk during which she simply wanted to benefit from nature, a woman found herself face to face with a panicked, dying fox with its paw in a foot snare trap, undoubtedly for several hours. Looking to come to its aid, she was violently challenged by the trapper who did not hesitate to insult her before threatening her, gun in hand. Additional proof, if there is any need for it, of hunters’ feeling of total impunity. The walker had to resign herself and step aside. The man then fired a first bullet at the fox, without killing it… Was this to prolong its suffering and benefit for the longest time possible from his hobby? The poor animal had to endure a few long seconds before it was finally put out of its misery.

While the initial report to local police seemed to go unheeded, we intervened to report these particularly serious facts and to demand a quick response against these acts of cruelty.

This decisive action allowed some progress: at the start of January, supported by our local point of contact, the walker was interviewed at the police station. An investigation was launched on three counts: illegal trapping, threats, and acts of cruelty towards an animal. She will, hopefully, be able to identify the trapper so that he can answer for his actions.

One Voice fully committed for foxes

For many years, we have reported on the fate reserved for foxes in France. Classified nationally as a ‘species likely to cause damage’, they are perpetually massacred. They are the subject of the most cruel hunts: horse and hound hunting, night hunts, underground hunting with hounds. Hunters do not hesitate to attack foxes, held on the ground before being violently killed, sometimes with metal clamps on their heads.

Red foxes are sensitive and intelligent beings who, like all animals, deserve to be protected. Nothing can justify the persecution and massacring that they are victims of. Faced with repeated attacks by hunters to kill more and more animals by resorting to the most unbearable methods, we are repeating our appeal for a radical reform of hunting, and will continue to intervene whenever necessary to give foxes a voice. Together, let’s demand that foxes be removed from the list of species likely to cause damage (formerly ‘pests’).

Translated from the French by Joely Justice

Safety in hunting: One Voice reports on an umpteenth smokescreen

Safety in hunting: One Voice reports on an umpteenth smokescreen
06.01.2023
Safety in hunting: One Voice reports on an umpteenth smokescreen
Hunting

When animal killers become just killers, the government offers Canada Dry, far from the expectations and despair of the French population who would like to benefit from nature and the great outdoors (the bit that is left) without risking their lives. One Voice is reporting on the dramatic under-sizing of government propositions that are taking shape in relation to the stakes. What it will take is a radical reform on hunting, not small measures that are once again insulting to grieving families and to biodiversity which is being wiped out before our eyes.

From the elusive to Canada Dry…

At the end of October 2022, Bérangère Couillard, the Secretary of State in charge of Ecology and therefore the hunting file, implemented a consultation – what made this necessary..? Because these announcements about hunting management are elusive… We thought that there would be a bill after the efficacy of the petition filed on the Senate’s site by the One Day A Hunter [Un Jour Un Chasseur] collective, then from our hearing at the Senators’ mandate… But no, still no immediate decisions.

On Monday, the Minister announced the result of this consultation. It involved, among other things, limiting hunters’ blood alcohol levels, a minimum measure which French people were gobsmacked by in the autumn when no restrictions had so far been imposed in this plan for people who were nevertheless armed in the countryside. A request that One Voice has been bringing up for many years, just like annual eye check-ups…

Another of the measures expected by more than four in five French people to make hunting in France safe (a stable proportion for five years: see the three rounds of the IPSOS/One Voice survey in 2018, 2021, and 2022), is a hunting ban during the whole of the school holidays as well as for two days a week including Sundays.
Instead of this, the government is delivering a gadget, an application called ‘Suricate’ (they will tell us that just this once it is not a freephone number) which, if it did not concern the lives and deaths of others, would be laughable.

A hunting and gunmakers’ lobby that is stronger than safety and biodiversity

The lack of any political desire to change anything is such a pity. The accumulated deaths of animals and humans still do not measure up to a lobby for which we wonder how they still manage to dictate their own laws when they represent such a small minority. Country people as well as city-dwellers are more than fed up!

What can we still expect from a government that is not even capable of listening to the population? To keep them safe?
Horse and hound hunting is still happening, as well as underground hunting with hounds, penned hunting, and wild boar breeding farms, or deer being released to be killed. The French President even lowered the price of hunting licences by half during his first mandate! And the Ministry has opposed us so many times at the State Council to keep and justify the massacring of birds with cruel glue hunting traps and other traditional hunting methods…

If the great advances for biodiversity in general and animals in particular come down to plastic fast-food packaging and an app, we are far from the hopes raised by the ‘Make our planet great again’ from the beginning of Macron I.

Translated from the French by Joely Justice