Wolves, the prey of the French State

Since
the wolf population has painfully reached the threshold of 500
individuals, more and more our country seems not to care about its
role in protection, but to work to decimate it.

From speeches to action, the big gap

Officially,
however, the government is keeping up with the hype. They say they
feel concerned about the decline in the biodiversity and the
preservation of the wildlife. They claim to encourage cohabitation
between wolves and humans … But it is with guns that he settles the
question! Because in reality, it is by legitimizing the large-scale massacres of wild canids that the leaders put breeders and hunters in
their pockets.

It’s not me, it’s someone else

To
avoid having too much blood of a species – especially one who is
protected – on their hands, and to be caught in the act of
contradiction, the central power has found the parade … By the
decree of September 12^th
2018, it designated a Prefect to coordinate the national wolf action plan. Until December 31^st
2023, it will be the Prefect of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, who
“drives and coordinates the action of the Prefects of all the
departments concerned by the national action plan on wolves for the
implementation of the said plan”. Among other prerogatives, the
magistrate was given unusual skills. He can “specify” the
conditions for applying the decrees of the ministers responsible for
ecology and agriculture. More prosaically, it is empowered to make
exceptions to measures to protect species of wild fauna and flora.
And decide, in this case, to joyfully increase the rate of “removal”
of wolves, within the “limit” of 2% of the average size of
their population estimated annually. But why stop there? Beyond this
threshold, shootings called “simple defence”, have been
approved by the Prefects of the departments and are still possible! A
wolf around? Hunters are called to the rescue! Let us recognize that
this delegation of the “license to kill”, this dilution of
responsibilities at all levels of the state apparatus, opens the door
to the worst abuses… Without anyone – and this is the whole
perversity of the system – being directly incriminated.

Recourse to the State Council

In
November 2018, by a gracious appeal, we called on the Prime Minister
to cancel his decree of September 12^th.
Our request having remained literally a dead letter, we seized the
State Council in March 2019. For the moment, the latter has not yet
been decided. But we already know that the Ministry of Ecological and
Inclusive Transition is neither on our side or that of the of wolves.
On October 7^th,
he sent a letter to the President of the Council asking him to reject
our request. Thus, even the institution is supposed to be officially
in charge of protecting the nature in our country, though it prefers
to submit to the demands of farmers and hunters! Rather than
establishing an alternative and an ethical solution to pastoral
problems, rather than giving back their full place to these
marvellous and sentient beings whose ancestors we have already
persecuted, it lets lobbies take hold of the subject, put pressure on
local elected officials (and in turn on state representatives) to
spread slander!

Fanaticism and obscurantism

The
return of wolves to France has raised deeply archaic fears. Even if,
God and devil are not as much invited to the debate as in medieval
times, the great predators find themselves as formerly hunted down on
all sides, victims of terrible prejudices born of simple ignorance or
skilfully maintained by those who want their skin. Treated like
“monsters”, “game” or just like bulky competitors, they fall
one after the other. These wolves, who have barely risen from the
ashes, are dying again on the earth where, however, their ancestors
and ours knew how to live together in peace, in the distant past …
It was a very long time ago, during Prehistory. Long before Homo
sapiens, under the influence of frenzied beliefs, believed himself
one day to be the king of “Creation” and suddenly saw in
the eyes of the wolf, his brother from a yester year, the look of the
“Evil one” in his eyes. Do we want to once again stray from
the path of wisdom? Do we really want to exterminate everything that
reminds us of our wild origins and our own animality? The French
government can always argue that 500 individuals are enough to make a
species viable, we know, as well as scientists, that this is not the
case. In fact, the Court of Justice of the European Union has just
extended the precautionary principle to protected species. Doubt must
therefore benefit them! Above all, like everyone else, the right to
exist.

Until this hearing

While
waiting to be at the State Council to defend them, we will in
November 2019 be in these places:

• 11/14/2019
  at the Lyon administrative court for the appeal against the merits
  against the prefect of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region who had
  assumed, last year, the right to increase the ceiling by three wolves
  annual slaughter,

• 11/19/2019
  at the Lyon Court of Appeal against the Prefect of Savoy who appealed
  the decision of the Grenoble administrative court to have declared illegal his decree of September 10, 2015. This judgment had saved
  three wolves out of the 6 planned to be shot.