The Ministry of Ecology continues to let hunters trap larks

The Ministry of Ecology continues to let hunters trap larks
07.10.2022
France
The Ministry of Ecology continues to let hunters trap larks
Wildlife

Today, on 7 October 2022, the official journal published the four decrees from the Ministry of Ecology re-implementing traditional hunting. However, the decrees from 2018 to 2021 had clearly been suspended and cancelled twice in a row last year by the State Council after a decision by the EU Court of Justice, two jurisdictions that One Voice had referred to alongside the LPO. Once again, we are referring it to the State Council.

The decrees from 4 October 2022, relating to the numbers and the capturing of field larks, in Landes, Lot-et-Garonne, but also in Gironde and the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, using netting and traps (cages), are once more nonsensical regarding the Birds Directive, which specifically makes it clear that traps must be selective. And once more they were issued on a Friday, as they were last year, to allow hunters to start killing birds for the whole weekend before we could intervene.

The maximum number of field larks that can be captured with nets has thus been set at 38,600 in the Gironde department, 56,672 in Landes, 1,230 in Lot-et-Garonne, and at 2,200 in Pyrénées-Atlantiques for the 2022-2023 season, and with regard to the cages, the maximum number authorised for captured field larks is set at 2,870 in Lot-et-Garonne and at 4,928 in Landes. That is 106,500 field larks, to which the collateral victims (other birds caught in the traps) must be added, who will struggle and lose their lives before the hunter-trappers arrive.

One Voice, who have been fighting for years to get these cruel methods banned — that can kill any bird that gets trapped without exception, including individuals from a protected species — will file, as they have already done and as they have announced, the appeals and emergency interim proceedings necessary to allow birds to survive in the south of France. It cannot be that because this kind of particularly barbaric hunting is only practised by only a few hunters, it is allowed to happen. For each bird taken by these traps, we are talking about life or death.

The advantage is essential for the birds concerned and symbolic in terms of cost for the entirety of the population.

According to Muriel Arnal, President of One Voice:

«Birds are living beings to be protected as such. They are among the hardest hit by the sixth mass extinction of species that we are currently experiencing with pesticides putting them in a situation of chronic famine, urbanisation harming their populations with noise, light, and a lack of places to nest… Drought and fires this summer have ended up hitting them head-on. It is essential that we rally for them. These ‘traditional hunting’ decrees are a disgrace.»

Our Ipsos/One Voice survey, released on 6 October 2022, clearly shows that eight to nine French people refuse to allow hunting to be practised in places decimated by heat and summer fires and that they want a ban on traditional hunting (83%, of which 56% are “completely in agreement”).

One Voice will be there throughout France this weekend to raise awareness among the public of the harmful effects of hunting, of the animals hunted, but also of the dogs that are used as weapons and considered to be objects.

• * Decree of 4 October 2022 relating to the capture of field larks with cages in the Landes and Lot-et-Garonne departments
• * Decree of 4 October 2022 relating to the maximum number of field larks captured on average with cages in the Landes and Lot-et-Garonne departments for the 2022-2023 season
• * Decree of 4 October 2022 relating to the capture of field larks with nets in the Gironde, Landes, Lot-et-Garonne, and Pyrénées-Atlantiques departments
• * Decree of 4 October 2022 relating to the maximum number of field larks that can be captured on average with nets in the Gironde, Landes, Lot-et-Garonne, and Pyrénées-Atlantiques departments for the 2022-2023 season

Translated from the French by Joely Justice

New IPSOS/One Voice survey: twice as many French people opposed to hunting as those in favour

New IPSOS/One Voice survey: twice as many French people opposed to hunting as those in favour
06.10.2022
France
New IPSOS/One Voice survey: twice as many French people opposed to hunting as those in favour
Wildlife

One year after the circulation of the first infiltration investigation images from One Voice on hunting revealed the remarks made by hunters, particularly on safety, the Association has repeated its IPSOS survey determining the opinions of French people regarding hunting, in the context of the reopening of the 2022-2023 season.

A context in which hunters have finally come across strong opposition in the field: ours

In the meantime, numerous events have or are about to take place. The government is still hesitating to once more authorise the traditional hunting of small birds against the decision from the State Council, following the one from the European Union Court of Justice.

The commission in charge of the case file on the law proposed on the safety of hunting by the Senate, who met with us, returned a more than disappointing report, even though the trial on the death of Morgan Keane, who had started the ‘One Day One Hunter’ petition obtaining more than 120,000 signatures on the Senate’s site, is starting in a few weeks. 87% of French people found that hunting poses safety problems for walkers. Around three in four people living near a hunting zone are worried by the idea of walking around in the countryside due to the presence of hunters; almost eight in ten people have already avoided going out in this case, six on multiple occasions.

Thousands of animals have perished in fires in the summer or have been floored by the heatwave. All of them have suffered.

Badgers and their babies have been hunted down to the depths of their setts in numerous departments; we have joined together with numerous local and national associations for justice to put an end to this deadly hobby and have also documented the process. The National Assembly’s Sustainable Development Committee also heard from us at the end of September 2022 about wire fencing in Sologne, after that of the Senate last year, because our investigation into penned hunting in Sologne and elsewhere had provided us with solid expertise in the field.

Only one in four French people are in favour of hunting

The results of the IPSOS/One Voice survey in September 2022 do however give food for thought to those defending animals like ourselves. In fact, since last year, the proportion of people who state that they have a favourable opinion towards hunting has risen (26% versus 20% in September 2021). The ‘management of animal populations’, particularly, is an aspect of hunting that six in ten French people think is valid. French people are therefore still ignoring what hunting is in reality: a hobby which has no other justification than the pleasure of killing, with no or almost no limits. Despite strong news linked to the dangers and endless requests for exemption by hunters, some find them, unjustly, charming.

Animal breeding farms for hunting: partridges, wild boars, deer… or feeding (always feeding wild animals in the same place so that they can kill them as soon as the hunting season begins) would not exist if hunters were really ‘regulators’.

Last year, it also seemed that the annual eight million tonnes of lead that had fallen to the bottom of the wetlands due to these same hunters had been forgotten, polluting the whole fragile ecosystem of these ponds and seashores, where huts can be installed and live ducks attached to call to other ducks to land while passing during migration – they too are forgotten… We will not omit this, and will do everything we can for the information to be remembered once again.

After the heatwave and fires, French people are in favour of leaving animals alone

Hunters justify their existence by arguing that they love nature and that they regulate animal species who, without them, “would run riot”. On one hand, nobody else but them believes in this self-proclaimed status of them being on-the-ground environmentalists. Last year’s survey shows this well. On the other, if this was really the case, no hunter would shoot this year, given the suffering and also the carnage of this summer throughout the whole of France. Eight to nine French people in ten agree with a ban on hunting in areas affected by drought or fires, the majority are even “completely in agreement” with this.

However, the most shared opinion is still an overall opposition to hunting (48%), strong support of framework measures for hunting (all measures proposed are supported by the majority of French people who are “completely in favour”, and 76% to 92% in favour of them). Finally, a negative view of what hunting is (from another era and not a hobby like any other), of what it offers to animals (cruel to 65%) and humans (intrinsically a source of risk).

One Voice — at a moment when animal associations leading investigations are threatened by a gag amendment adopted by the finance committee at the National Assembly — who want to be a single voice for animals, the planet, and humans, will do all we can to support animals against the hunting lobby and to always inform the public as best we can on the reality of what hunting is: a dangerous, barbaric, and polluting activity.

Download the survey in its entirety

The French and hunting — An Ipsos study for One Voice

Translated from the French by Joely Justice

One Voice in court for mountain Galliformes!

One Voice in court for mountain Galliformes!
30.09.2022
France
One Voice in court for mountain Galliformes!
Wildlife

To please hunters, prefects continue to attack birds. More specifically, two mountain Galliformes: black grouse in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence and grey partridges in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques. The emergency interim hearings are set respectively for Monday 3 October at the Marseille Administrative Tribunal at 2pm, a case in which One Voice is filing a voluntary intervention supporting the Ligue pour la Protection des Oiseaux [LPO: League for the Protection of Birds] case file on black grouse, and at the Pau Administrative Tribunal on Tuesday 4 October at 2pm, where One Voice will be alone in defending the grey partridges.

Hunters are rubbed up the right way by the prefectures. A habit of State services who have not always understood that society has changed and that the requirement to set an example in terms of respecting nature and biodiversity is essential for the population. Under the pretext that it has always been done this way, it is no longer conceivable or tolerable to publish decrees indulging hunters, and what’s more, by justifying them, under clearly incorrect pretexts.

According to Muriel Arnal, President of One Voice: « Hunters are perpetually trying to push the limits of their deadly hobby. But it is not conceivable to leave the animals, registered on the list of animals to be protected, to be shot at! The reports, which confirm what we have been claiming for decades, are not lacking: animals are disappearing from the planet, which is extremely worrying for all of us. We cannot sit back and let this happen. »

Saving grey partridges in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques is urgent!

The Pyrénées-Atlantiques Prefecture has not spared any effort in pleasing hunters. The order that we are contesting and trying to get urgently suspended currently allows them to slaughter four partridges each in the mountain ranges in the 2022-2023 season. But what the Prefecture omits to mention in its decree is, neither more or less, the number of hunters and the maximum number of slaughtered partridges permitted.

If we therefore take the decree at face value, and despite the species being protected on a European level by the Birds Directive, it would theoretically be possible to eradicate these animals from the department, if there are a ‘sufficient’ amount of hunters! An even bigger scandal when we know that the population of these birds is already in constant decline in the Pyrenees mountains, and classified as ‘near-threatened’. The slightest gunshot on one of these grey partridges is therefore also a fatal shot on the entire species.

To the rescue of black grouse on borrowed time…

As for the black grouse in the Alpes de Haute-Provence, the Prefecture has authorised, despite the species being ‘vulnerable’ in the Rhône-Alpes region and also having been ‘near-threatened’ in France since 2016, the slaughter of forty-two of them! An aberration, when we know that the reasons given for issuing this authorisation is the reproductive success of these birds in the current year. But… is this not the exact opposite of the effect expected from the constant conservation efforts implemented for the species? As in many other case files, we are facing prefectural services who are completely disconnected from the climate emergency and, in this context, also from the protection necessary for wildlife.

Animals are dying from the inactivity and short-term vision of our civil service, being reinforced in its conservative habits by a hunting lobby well-rooted in local networks. To promote animal rights and defend birds and all other animals, One Voice will not move an inch.

Translated from the French by Joely Justice

Maybe not the ‘Pablo Escobar of Rigaous*’, but this pensioner has killed and sold thousands of robins

Maybe not the ‘Pablo Escobar of Rigaous*’, but this pensioner has killed and sold thousands of robins
27.09.2022
France
Maybe not the ‘Pablo Escobar of Rigaous*’, but this pensioner has killed and sold thousands of robins
Wildlife

On 26 September, the Toulon Legal Tribunal ruled: a poacher receives a heavy sentence after trapping, killing, and selling thousands of robins. One Voice is delighted with this decision that puts an end to years of abuse against a protected species.

« But where were the hunters on Monday, to defend biodiversity, those who have received millions of euros for this task? Clearly, we did not see or hear them. Without the French Biodiversity Agency (OFB) and our associations, the already fragile robins would have continued to perish by being poached or glue trapped. Make no mistake about it, the only people defending biodiversity are us! » Muriel Arnal, President of One Voice

The hearing for us against a retired farmer was held on Tuesday 26 September 2022 for the destruction and sale of robins in Revest-les-Eaux, as well as possession of a weapon without a licence.

One Voice as well as ASPAS, France Nature Environnement PACA, and the LPO all filed civil cases in this bleak case incriminating this man who had regularly engaged in illegal activities capturing and killing robins in a phenomenal quantity.

To perpetrate his crimes, the defendant had several traps, as ‘traditional’ as they are cruel, and for which the use was in fact suspended by the State Council following our appeal in 2021. In this case, they were steel traps that close around the necks of their victims. Once decapitated, he consumed them or froze them to sell on the black market.

According to his own statement, he therefore poached 20 to 25 robins a day; according to an estimation by the French Office for Biodiversity, that is 5000 birds killed each annual season.

On allegations from a witness having bought robins from him for 8 euros a dozen, we discovered that the poacher carried out this abuse for a long time and was responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of additional robins.

Faced with such crimes and after a very intense hearing, the prosecutor requested a 5000 euro fine, a ban on keeping a weapon, and that the ruling be published in French hunting magazine, Le Chasseur français.

The magistrates’ court went much further. He sentenced him to a 6 month suspended sentence, a 25,000 euro fine, the confiscation of all of his seals, a ban on keeping a weapon, compensation for all civil parties up to 3,000 euros each in moral damages, as well as the publication of his decision as soon as it is final in Le Chasseur français magazine.

*Rigaous: Provençal name for robins.

Translated from the French by Joely Justice