Victories by the bucketful against underground hunting, a practice that is slowly disappearing!
After five years of legal battle, the much-decried practice of badger digging has been significantly reduced in France. This positive development is due not only to the many successes achieved before the administrative courts, but also to the media coverage generated by the major awareness campaigns run by our three associations in recent years. Together, AVES France, ASPAS and One Voice are committed to fighting against the cruelty of underground hunting, until this medieval practice is completely abolished.
France is one of the last countries in Europe to authorize hunting by digging up, also called “vénerie sous terre”, a particularly cruel and indiscriminate practice that involves sending small dogs into badger burrows to corner them, digging into the earth sometimes for hours at a time, then removing the animals from their burrows with large pliers before killing them.
This hunt, open from September to January, is also possible from May 15, by simple decision of the prefecture: this is known as the “supplementary period” of underground hunting. In the absence of any political will to abolish underground hunting altogether, it is precisely these “supplementary periods” against which ASPAS, AVES and One Voice have filed dozens of legal pleas* in recent years, resulting in numerous victories. In 2024 alone, out of the 26 petitions for suspension filed, our associations obtained the suspension of underground hunting in 20 departments**.
Among the main arguments accepted by the judges: the absence of significant damage attributed to badgers (in crops, road embankments, etc.) and the presence of young badgers in the burrows in spring and summer. In fact, the French Environment Code prohibits the killing of the young of a species whose hunting is authorized, and badgers have a low reproduction rate, with their young only becoming truly independent in autumn.
As our legal precedents grow, victory after victory, prefects are increasingly reluctant to authorize supplementary periods, much to the chagrin of hunters. Some no longer authorize them at all, others propose shortened periods, while others, finally, persist in maintaining the opening of underground hunting from May 15 at all costs, even though a judge has already suspended and then annulled the contested decree…
In 2020, the number of departments authorizing this controversial hunt from May 15 was 72. By 2024, the number had fallen to 19!
An overwhelming majority of French people are opposed to digging up
A long-ignored animal in France, the badger has benefited from major awareness campaigns in recent years, and more and more citizens are sympathetic to their cause.
According to a 2023 Ipsos poll commissioned by One Voice, 84% of French people say they are in favor of banning digging up, whatever the species concerned, a percentage that has remained stable since 2018. This strong opposition is regularly expressed during public consultations each year, prior to the adoption by prefects of decrees authorizing or not supplementary periods of underground hunting. Every spring, ASPAS and AVES France are particularly active in publicizing the existence of these consultations and inviting as many citizens as possible to take part. Even if the opinions are only consultative, and very few prefects take them into account in their final decisions, the rejection of underground hunting is often irrevocable (this was the case this year in the Saône-et-Loire region, for example, with 84% of unfavorable opinions).
In 2020, the publication of One Voice‘s infiltration of an underground hunting crew enabled many people to discover in pictures the atrocity of underground hunting. In 2022, the large-scale citizens’ petition filed by ASPAS on the French Senate website was relayed by numerous associations and influencers, enabling the required 100,000 signatures to be reached and surpassed in less than 6 months.
That same year, ASPAS launched World Badger Day on May 15, a major awareness-raising campaign in the field, in the media and on the Internet, in which numerous partner associations across France took part and continue to do so every year.
On May 13, 2024, a letter co-signed by 10 NGOs was sent to the Ministry of Ecological Transition calling for a total ban on underground hunting. It’s inconceivable that such cruel and destructive hunting is still allowed in 2024: we won’t give up until it’s completely abolished!
* Other nature protection associations with a local scope of action have also contributed to the legal battle (FNE Aura, LPO Aura, Indre Nature, etc.).
** Allier, Ardennes, Aube, Calvados, Charente-Maritime, Corrèze, Creuse, Eure-et-Loir, Ille-et-Vilaine, Seine-et-Marne, Deux-Sèvres, Haute-Vienne. For the 6 other departments where the courts did not follow our request for suspension this year (Cantal, Gironde, Lot-et-Garonne, Loire-Atlantique, Puy-de-Dôme and Vendée), pleas for annulment will be heard after the fact. In addition, One Voice and AVES France have filed other pleas which have resulted in the suspension of the supplementary periods of underground hunting in 8 other departments: Aveyron, Cher, Côtes d’Armor, Eure, Finistère, Indre, Indre-et-Loire and Morbihan.