Victory for the foxes: Press release
In a court order dated 28 July 2026, the judge overseeing summary proceedings at the Administrative Court of Cergy-Pontoise suspended the order issued by the Prefect of Hauts-de-Seine, which authorised hunts at the authorities’ initiative in a private garden until 31 August. At least the four foxes who live in the vicinity of the property will be spared. Following an urgent request from One Voice, the judge dismissed, one by one, the justifications put forward for killing them: there was neither a health risk nor ‘significant damage’, and non-lethal alternatives were available.
One Voice had brought an urgent legal action against this order of 15 June 2026, which authorised two and a half months of trapping and night-time shooting in a private garden, based solely on a complaint from a local resident and without any alternative measures having been considered. The court’s decision echoes the organisation’s arguments, point by point.
No public health risk justified these killings. Alveolar echinococcosis, regularly cited to legitimise the culling of foxes, is not present in the Île-de-France region. Furthermore, reducing fox populations does not help to curb this disease; on the contrary, it could even enhance its spread. This finding is in line with the conclusions of the French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health & Safety (ANSES), which had already stated in its 2023 report that no culling of foxes could be justified on health grounds.
That left the so-called ‘nuisances’. A cat had taken refuge at the top of a cedar tree: the judge ruled that this did not constitute the ‘significant damage’ required to authorise such operations. Foxes do not kill cats, despite what hunters – who kill both cats and foxes whenever they get the chance – would have us believe. Excrement, burrows, a frightened cat: nothing that could justify killing a family of foxes.
Finally, the court noted that there was nothing to prevent the foxes from being captured alive and released in a less urbanised area. This is the real blind spot of the prefectural order: the death penalty was being authorised without any alternative having been considered.
A nationwide crackdown on foxes
This decision comes against a backdrop of widespread persecution: every year in France, at least 500,000 foxes are killed by shooting, trapping or digging-out, based on their being classified as a ‘species likely to cause damage’ (ESOD) in 88 French departments, a classification with no scientific basis.
The draft three-year decree for 2026–2029, which is open for public consultation until tomorrow, Friday 30 July 2026, proposes extending this classification to 91 departments – three more than at present.
“If the woman who demanded that the foxes be trapped cared even a little about nature and animals, she would have taken the time to find out that cats and foxes coexist very well if given a little time. This determination to have them killed by the cruellest means, this hatred of biodiversity – which has already suffered so much, particularly from wildfires and heatwaves – is deeply worrying. We will be present wherever we are needed.” Muriel Arnal, President of One Voice.
One Voice will remain vigilant. What the courts have just reaffirmed regarding a garden in the Hauts-de-Seine applies everywhere else: wildlife is not a nuisance; it is an asset.
Victory for the foxes: Press Release
Victory for the foxes of the Hauts-de-Seine: the courts have suspended the order authorising their killing in a private garden