France: Recreational Hunters Against Bird Hunting Ban
Rural identity and the privileged relationship of recreational hunters with animals are said to be at stake.
Thousands of recreational hunters took to the streets in France on Saturday to protest against a ban on traditional bird hunting.
Council of State annuls permits
The protests in various departments across the country were peaceful, according to police. In August, the Council of State had annulled previously granted permits for recreational hunting of around 115,000 birds, including lapwings, larks, and thrushes, using nets and cages. These were found to violate the European Birds Directive of 2009.
As early as June, recreational hunting of birds using limed sticks — a method practiced in some regions of southern France — had been declared illegal by the supreme administrative court. In this method, birds become stuck to branches coated with sticky adhesive.
The European Commission recently ratified a ban on lead ammunition set to take effect by 2023, which will force more than one million French recreational hunters to switch weapons.
Recreational hunters feel “attacked”
Meanwhile, the recreational hunting community also feels cornered by what it describes as a small group of “radical hunting opponents.”
«“We are being attacked more and more, constantly criticised — it is becoming unbearable”, says Thierry Delefosse, director of the hunting association of the Somme. Thierry Delefosse even speaks of the rise of “anti-hunting fundamentalism.”
Behind the scenes, accusations are also surfacing that the government of President Emmanuel Macron is bowing to the interests of lobby groups to secure votes, just seven months before the presidential election.
More on the subject of recreational hunting: In our dossiers on the criticism of recreational hunting gather fact-checks, analyses and background reports. What the research says about this is shown by Hunting fact-checked: the state of research.
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.
