60’000 Euro Fine: Hobby Hunter Kills White-Tailed Eagle

A 35-year-old hobby hunter was recently sentenced by a court in Grenoble to four months imprisonment on probation and more than 60’000 EUR in damages for killing a protected bird of prey, a white-tailed eagle.

The bird came from the park ‚Les Aigles du Léman‚ in Haute-Savoie.

The conviction for “unauthorised destruction of a protected species” also resulted in the revocation of his hunting licence and a three-year ban on possessing and carrying a weapon.

He was also ordered to pay a total of 61,301 EUR to the biodiversity protection associations that had joined the proceedings as co-plaintiffs. The 30-year-old, who had held his hunting licence for approximately 15 years, shot a female white-tailed eagle on 24 February in the Oisans massif.

His 30-year-old half-brother, who was present at the time of the act, was acquitted of “aiding in the destruction of a protected species” but was sentenced to two fines. The two brothers had removed four feathers from the bird. These were found during a search of his home. During questioning, he admitted to the facts.

On 24 February, these two men had already illegally killed two deer.

Fewer than 30 in France

The bird named ‚Morzine‘ had been born in captivity at the park ‚Les Aigles du Léman‘. It had been bred as part of a national scientific programme to reintroduce the white-tailed eagle. This bird of prey is the rarest in France: there are fewer than 30 specimens in France, both in captivity and in the wild.

The court's decision ‚shows that awareness is growing of the ecological harm and what it costs to illegally injure a protected species‘, said Eric Posak, lawyer for the Bird Protection League (LPO), to which the convicted hunter must pay 30,000 EUR for the “ecological damage”.

Jacques-Olivier Travers, director of the association “Aigles du Léman”, welcomed the ruling, noting that among hobby hunters there is still “a sense of impunity”.

Since 2022, fourteen birds from the Lake Geneva park have been released. Morzine is the third to have been shot.