Since our application for a finding of negligence plus 500,000 Euros in damages was submitted to the Council of State in November 2018 after the State had been issued with a notice to comply, we have been awaiting a date for the hearing. It has now finally been fixed! Our application for publication of a new decree substantially identical to that of 2017, which prohibited captive breeding and exchanges and imports of new cetaceans but was set aside because of a procedural irregularity, is finally to be heard. Since the beginning of the year three dolphins have died in dolphinariums, two shortly after being born!
The hearing will take place in the Council of State in Paris (métro Palace Royal) at 9am on 17 September.
Since the decree was set aside French dolphinariums have been governed by totally obsolete regulations dating from 1981. It is high time to update the regulations concerned (again!) in the light of international scientific knowledge and animal rights in France, which have changed a lot in 39 years.
In its statement of defence of October 2019 the Ministry of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy had replied by citing the ministerial announcements of November 2019, which in fact were never made. This shows that the extensive and interminable discussions organized at the ministry, in which One Voice participated, will have been to no avail given how many changes in ministers there has been since then. Only one thing hasn't changed: the suffering of these extremely intelligent and social animals, condemned to swim in circles in circumstances that take all the joy out of their lives until death overtakes them.
We will not settle for a ministerial decree listing improvements to the prison conditions, which would allow captive breeding and exchanges of cetaceans between dolphinariums to continue. This hell must stop, and these measures must be part of the process.
In fact it's still one death after another in French dolphinariums. After Aïcko, Valentin, Freya and many others over the years, two of the four dolphin calves born this year have died: Lotty's calf, born in Marineland in Antibes, died on the day she was born, and her mother died two months later. Amtan's calf, born on 8 June at Planet Sauvage, died on 16th, having lived for only a week – additional proof, if any were needed, that such premises are not suitable for cetaceans and that captive breeding is an abomination.
But what the Council of State is going to hear is our application for a ruling of State negligence: once the State had recognised that orcas and dolphins were suffering, why did it not issue a new decree? The whole of the €500,000 in damages that we are claiming will be used to set up a marine sanctuary for dolphins liberated from captivity.
Translated from the French by Patricia Fairey
