Victory for badgers: the Bordeaux Administrative Tribunal made the opening of an additional hunting period for underground hunting with hounds illegal in Summer 2021.

To stop the massacre of young badgers in Morbihan, we are calling on you to respond to the public consultation online until 15 April.

Hunting in Sologne: when birds dying is a good deal

Hunting in Sologne: when birds dying is a good deal
22.03.2022
Hunting in Sologne: when birds dying is a good deal
Wildlife

Last November, our investigators infiltrated a group of hunters in Sologne. At their own risk, they filmed the gunfire, the birds being thrown into a panic with tens of them falling down, then dying while being sneered at. Horrific scenes, paid for in cash. Hunting is a fruitful market. Killing birds off pays big time.

« The birds try to escape, to fly quickly and up high, but they are surrounded. Their only chance of survival is the shooting mistakes made by mediocre killers. Some fall dozens of metres mid-flight, still alive. The impact is violent: their body crashes into the ground, they struggle, their legs broken, lungs punctured. The agony is drawn out… » one of our investigators reported, still very shaken by the scenes that he had just witnessed.

Last November, we also infiltrated a hunt in Sologne. If our images – mainly distributed discretely – reveal the barbaric nature of these practices that certain people still dare to defend in the name of tradition, they also expose what is less well known: the fruitful trafficking of hunting.

Fairground tickets for sentient beings

Our videos prove it: hunting is not a healthy walk in the fresh air, a harmony between humans, nature, and living things. Let’s stop with the clichéd ideas. To fill their knapsacks, the hunters pay the owners of the estates. They negotiate the date of the killing and the number of birds that they can shoot. Death is a trade, a money-making business.
On that day, pheasants and young partridges are released into a sky littered with bullets. They are at the meeting place. Hunters have paid. In a panic, the birds try to escape. Alas, captured in the sights of armed men, they are nothing but fairground tickets, tumbling down to the ground. On the ground, the men gather them and line them up.

Some are still moving, twitching, dying.

« I saw this magnificent revered pheasant struggling, desperately drawing on the last bit of life left in him to calm the pain running through him. Unblinking, the hunters watched him. Finally, one of them grabbed him by the tail and legs, shook him and put him back among the corpses. But the bird was still writhing. “Play dead”, another one ordered. Several long minutes passed still before his wings stopped moving. For good. This is what the agony of a pheasant struck in mid-flight looks like. » our investigator testified again.

Massacres every year

In the evening, after the hunt, the men count their takings. 124 pheasants, young partridges, and green woodpeckers have been shot down. The men applaud. They have earned themselves an aperitif.

Each year, millions of birds are killed in this way, slaughtered in plain flight or after months of being bred in captivity. Our investigators have been infiltrating hunts for three years. They have witnessed the ‘gifts’ which the authorities constantly deluge the hunters with. In this electoral period, the hunting lobbies will put pressure on those elected more than ever. We will not let them do it.

Translated from the French by Joely Justice

One Voice is going to the State Council on 23 March for the wolves

One Voice is going to the State Council on 23 March for the wolves
18.03.2022
One Voice is going to the State Council on 23 March for the wolves
Wildlife

We will never remain calm when faced with the eradication policy for wolves in France. Still this year, the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the prefect in charge of the Wolf Plan predict that 118 wolves will be slaughtered, even though the population of this animal that is a protected species has still not stabilised above 500 individuals. We have therefore filed two requests before the State Council for the cancellation of the 23/10/2020 ‘executive’ and ‘maximum’ orders regarding wolves. The hearing is set for 23 March at 2pm.

We have challenged the two orders of 23 October 2020, the first which sets the conditions and limits under which exclusions from the ‘destruction’ bans concerning wolves may be granted by the prefects, and the second, issued on the same day, which sets the maximum number of wolves that can be massacred each year. The second order allows the shooting of 19% of the wolf headcount per year (this threshold can go up to 21% under certain conditions). This percentage corresponds to 118 wolves in 2021 and just as many in 2022.

These orders have been set even though:

• The French National Council for Nature Conservation (Conseil National de la Protection de la Nature – CNPN) gave an unfavourable opinion on both intentions of the orders (as they did for the preceding orders).
• Wolves are a protected species that is still classified as ‘vulnerable’ by the IUCN which indicates that they are still at an increased risk of extinction.
• The percentage of the population authorised to be shot has been set higher without evaluation of the effects on the wolf population and, despite the exponential increase of the caps, at a bare minimum, the last few years have slowed the growth of the species.
• Many scientific studies highlight that a management policy based on the numbers of wolves is inadequate. We must take into account the social fabric of this population which is not currently being done.

Incidentally, the ‘executive’ order removes the necessity of scaring them before shooting, even though studies have shown it to be effective.

We have highlighted two aspects that are of the utmost importance to us: the insufficiency of devices relating to protection measures used for wolf packs, despite the triple electric fencing, guard dogs, reinforced and efficient security, and the absence of any demonstration of the effectiveness of lethal shootings and even their counter-productive nature (due to the de-structuring of wolf packs in particular).

A reputation to restore and individuals to protect, who all have their place in the ecosystem

We are, as we are every year, nauseated by this unfounded policy based on regulation by shooting instead of being driven by the desire to protect animals of this species. During our activities to raise awareness of this subject throughout France, our activists have explained this to the public. We are therefore asking the State Council for these orders to be annulled.

Condemned by the CNPN, this government policy has no grounds. Let’s be honest: it’s criminal. The French Office for Biodiversity (OFB) clearly points out the deadly effects. The survival rate of grey wolves went from 74% before 2014 to 58% from 2014-2019: alarming figures that are clearly attributable to the management of our leaders.

Incidentally, the study published in February 2019 by the Natural History Museum and the OFB clearly established a lack of correlation between the number of shots and the levels of damage that breeding farms suffer. However, on 2 November 2020, 97 wolves had been slaughtered. A chilling figure.

Excluding poaching, this official figure rose to 100 in 2021. The reality is much worse. Poachers are very active and we do not take their threats lightly. We have therefore filed complaints several times against poaching groups established in the last few years (in August 2020 and the previous year, in 2019), but this year it is the agricultural unions for sure who are making threats and calling for massacres.

On 23 February 2022, according to official figures, five wolves were already dead…

Translated from the French by Joely Justice