Hunting: the capture of certain birds by cages or nets re-authorized – The HuffPost

HUNTING – The standoff between the state and animal welfare associations is not about to end. Two months after the Council of State has ruled illegal several decrees concerning traditional bird hunts, eight texts published in Official newspaper this Friday, October 15 come from them authorize again.

Last August, the decrees authorizing the hunting of crested lapwings, golden plovers, skylark and other thrushes and blackbirds using nets (“pantes”, “tenderies”) or cages (“matoles”) had been deemed contrary to European law on the protection of birds by the administrative institution.

But in September, the executive had put several orders in consultation to allow some of these hunts, arguing that they respect the european law. These texts, explained to Parisian the Secretary of State for biodiversity Bérangère Abba, point out “the absence of an alternative solution”, “the quantity and selectivity” of the catches and the “controls” that will be carried out.

105,000 larks for the 2021-2022 season

The 2021-2022 hunting season will therefore authorize these traditional hunting techniques. Hunters will be able to take advantage of it this weekend. The decrees also specify the maximum number of birds to be captured per department. For example, the capture of approximately 105,000 skylarks is permitted for the period in a series of departments. These are the Gironde, Landes, Lot-et-Garonne and Pyrénées-Atlantiques.

The Bird Protection League had also announced in September its intention to request the suspension of these decrees if they were to be signed. This measure is interpreted as a gesture towards the very courted electorate of hunters who demonstrated by the thousands in mid-September.

Personalities are also indignant like the lawyer specializing in environment Arnaud Gossement. He evokes this Friday on Twitter a “sad day for the living and its rights”, a message shared in particular by the ecologist Delphine Batho. For Foundation spokesperson Brigitte Bardot, “France is once again violating European law and weakening declining bird populations”.

Willy Schraen, president of the National Federation of Hunters (FNC), welcomes “the unambiguous arbitration of the President of the Republic in favor of traditional hunts”, in a press release.

The FNC welcomes “a studious collaboration with the services of the Ministry of Ecological Transition” and argues that “the Council of State has never said that traditional hunts were illegal but it considered that the national decrees concerned were not sufficiently motivated so far ”.

The skylark and the crested lapwing are classified as “Least Concern” or “Near Threatened” according to the Red List of Threatened Species of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in France.

The hunting of thrushes, blackbirds, crested lapwings and golden plovers is also re-authorized in the Ardennes in small quantities. 5,800 over the authorized hunting period for the first two and 1,200 birds for the last two.

At the end of August, the government banned the hunting of the turtledove, a bird whose population has collapsed in Europe, and which had been protected by the Council of State in 2020. In June, the justice declared illegal slime hunting.

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