Protected wild animals as a ‘disruptive factor’: Olivier Bouygues on trial over alleged persecution of wild animals

French businessman Olivier Bouygues had to answer to the criminal court in Orléans on 7 and 8 September 2026.

The 75-year-old is the son of Bouygues Group founder Francis Bouygues and brother of Martin Bouygues. The accusation is serious: on his fenced hunting estate in the Sologne region, protected wild animals are said to have been systematically killed over a period of years. Public prosecutor Emmanuelle Bochenek-Puren spoke of a «professionalisation of destruction». The presumption of innocence applies to all defendants until a final verdict is reached.

In addition to Bouygues, five other individuals are on trial, including administrators and game wardens, as well as the operating company SCEA Saint-Hubert. The Bouygues Group itself is not party to the proceedings. The case concerns alleged offences committed between 2019 and 2025 on the roughly 650-hectare Domaine de Fontenaille near La Ferté-Saint-Aubin in the Loiret département, about twenty kilometres south of Orléans. Bouygues acquired the estate in 2002 and told the court that he spends forty to fifty days there each year, mainly during the hunting season. The entire estate is surrounded by fences over two metres high and lies within France's largest terrestrial Natura 2000 site.

Carcasses, traps and poison

The investigation was triggered by an anonymous tip-off received by the French Office for Biodiversity (OFB) on 25 March 2025. During a search on 4 June 2025, investigators from the OFB and the Gendarmerie discovered a dumping site containing carcasses, some in an advanced state of decomposition. Media reports mention kestrels, great egrets, harriers, common buzzards and cormorants, as well as wildcats, hedgehogs and a squirrel. According to the civil plaintiffs, notebooks containing lists of animals to be killed were also found.

The public prosecutor accuses the defendants of deliberately eliminating protected species because they were regarded as competition for commercial recreational hunting. On the estate, grey partridges and pheasants were kept in large numbers to be shot; investigators counted around 7,000 grey partridges as well as roughly 500 wild boars on 160 hectares — that is, three animals per hectare, a density that no forest produces naturally. Birds of prey, herons and wildcats eat eggs, chicks and young birds, thereby disturbing these populations intended for hunting. According to court records, during hunting parties with ten to fifteen shooters, an average of sixty birds per shooter per day were killed.

Central to the case is the charge of «illegal impairment of the conservation of a protected animal species by an organised group». Additional charges include the illegal keeping and breeding of wild boars and red deer, as well as further violations of weapons, environmental and hunting regulations. The legal classification is decisive for the sentence: destruction of protected species in France generally carries a penalty of up to three years' imprisonment and a fine of 150,000 euros. If the offence is committed by an organised group, the range increases to up to seven years and 750,000 euros.

«I knew nothing»

Olivier Bouygues denied all responsibility. He said he had «other things to do» than run the day-to-day business of the estate, and had been «shocked» and «surprised» when the investigation became known. His defence lawyer requested an acquittal and challenged the propriety of the proceedings. Several employees exonerated their employer in court, in some cases contradicting earlier statements made in police custody.

On the second day of the hearing, the public prosecutor requested a five-year suspended prison sentence for Bouygues, a fine of 750,000 euros (the statutory maximum), and a five-year ban from professional activities in agriculture and breeding related to recreational hunting. For the co-defendants, depending on their role, suspended sentences of one to several years, fines and temporary revocations of hunting licences were requested.

The environmental organisations that joined as civil parties, including the Ligue pour la protection des oiseaux, One Voice and France Nature Environnement, put the ecological damage at more than 750,000 euros; according to them, this claim is based on a minimum estimate of 1,314 animals killed. Notably, the recreational hunters' federation of the Loiret department also unanimously constituted itself as a civil party against Bouygues. The court intends to announce its verdict on 23 October 2026.

Why the case matters to Switzerland

The case exposes a pattern that does not stop at national borders. Where recreational hunting interests, large private fortunes and secluded, fenced-off hunting grounds converge, a space emerges that hardly anyone from outside can control. Precisely the seclusion of such estates makes it difficult to independently verify interventions in wildlife populations.

The fact that the trial is also being reported in Swiss media is not an indication of any Swiss involvement. No solid connection to Switzerland, such as a place of residence, a hunting ground or a Swiss legal proceeding, is evident from the available reports. Its significance for Switzerland instead lies in the transferable question of control, transparency and criminal prosecution in recreational hunting operations.

Switzerland, too, is familiar with the persecution of protected animals

The notion of a «clean» Swiss recreational hunting landscape does not hold up against the documented facts. Protected predators are also illegally persecuted here, demonstrably with traps, shots and poison, although so far not within a comparably large and publicly known system on a private hunting estate.

For the lynx, illegal killings, alongside traffic collisions and habitat fragmentation, are among the greatest dangers in Switzerland. In Valais, a research team led by the University of Bern uncovered that 17 illegal trap systems had been installed along the lynx's central immigration corridor, some of which were still operational when discovered. The first indications of lynx poaching in the canton dated back to 1995; it was only around two decades later that DNA material found on a trap led to the first conviction of a recreational hunter. More on this in our documentation «Valais: Systematic Poaching» as well as in the dossier «Poaching and Hunting Crime in Switzerland».

Birds of prey are also affected. The Zurich Higher Cantonal Court convicted a pigeon breeder who had laced a live pigeon with the highly toxic nerve agent carbofuran, banned in Switzerland, in order to kill a protected bird of prey. The poisoning was prevented because the pigeon was discovered. The court imposed a suspended custodial sentence of fifteen months and a fine of 1,500 francs. As in the Bouygues case, a protected species was treated as an unwanted nuisance and combated with a dangerous substance.

The French trial is therefore not an exotic isolated case, but a particularly glaring example of a phenomenon that is also documented in Switzerland: protected animals become targets wherever they are regarded as unwanted competition or a disturbance to human interests of use. Laws alone are not enough when there is no control over sealed-off hunting grounds and no consistent criminal prosecution.