France further restricts bird hunting
France's highest administrative court has ruled that hunting larks with nets and cages is illegal.
Council of State classifies lark hunting as illegal
France's Council of State has further restricted recreational hunting of birds.
The country's highest administrative court ruled on Monday that recreational hunting of larks with nets and cages is illegal and incompatible with EU law, as the newspaper «Le Monde» reported. In its ruling on the merits, the Council of State permanently overturned several government decrees from October 2022.
Tradition does not justify animal cruelty
As the court in Paris ruled, recreational hunting of birds cannot be justified by respect for tradition. France cannot simply authorise, by decree, hunting methods that have been banned under an EU bird protection directive since 2009, merely on the grounds that they constitute a traditional practice. It has not been demonstrated that skylarks could not simply be shot if one wished to hunt them.
Furthermore, recreational hunting with nets and cages carries the risk of a not insignificant bycatch of other bird species, the newspaper quoted from the court ruling.
Battle against time-honoured methods
In recent years, the Council of State had already moved against traditional bird hunting methods by overturning framework regulations from 1989 that permitted recreational hunting using glue traps for other bird species. The government had regularly invoked these regulations to re-authorise their use under pressure from France's militant hunting lobby.
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More on the subject of recreational hunting: In our dossiers on the criticism of recreational hunting gather fact-checks, analyses and background reports. The scientific evidence is presented in the overview Studies on the Effects of Recreational Hunting.
The position of IG Wild beim Wild: IG Wild beim Wild rejects recreational hunting. Our model is the canton of Geneva, which has managed without recreational hunting since 1974: without hunting seasons, without hunting dogs, without driven hunts, without high seats, without the animal cruelty and crime that go hand in hand with hunting season elsewhere. What has worked there for over fifty years disproves every position paper by JagdSchweiz. An association that bases its policy on claims it refutes in its own documents is not a professional organisation, but a factory for misinformation.
