France's top administrative court has banned a further range of traditional techniques for hunting birds. The move follows the banning of glue trapping in June. The ruling has been welcomed by environmental pressure groups but denounced by hunters.
The techniques banned under the latest ruling by the State Council include hunting with nets or bird cages, practices popular in the southwest of France and the Ardennes region in the east of the country.
The new decision revokes exemptions granted by the government to allow the hunting of birds such as lapwings, golden plovers, skylarks, thrushes and blackbirds after a 2009 EU directive that banned the mass hunting of birds irrespective of species.
The court said the government has not proven that such techniques were necessary and the "idea alone of preserving so-called 'traditional' methods is not enough to authorise them".
Alors qu’une nouvelle saison de chasse vient de débuter, @WillySchraen et la @MountainBikersF tiennent à alerter contre les actes de malveillances qui se multiplient à l’encontre des personnes qui pratiquent une activité de loisir dans la #nature. https://t.co/N0tpBtVucn
— Chasseurs de France (@ChasseursFrance) October 7, 2020
The EU Court of Justice said in March that using glue traps caused "irreparable harm" to the thrushes and blackbirds that are caught.
Activists say that 150,000 birds die annually in France from non-selective hunting techniques such as glue traps and nets at a time when Europe's bird population is in sharp decline.
'An immense victory for birds'
The League for the Protection of Birds (LPO), one of the groups that brought the complaint, said it was time for the government to formally outlaw practices that "come from another age".
"While biodiversity is collapsing and with it bird populations, France had to be pushed into a corner by the threat of an exemplary condemnation by the EU Court of Justice," said LPO president Allain Bougrain-Dubourg.
The other organisation behind the complaint, One Voice, said that 100,000 birds were being killed every year as a result of the exemptions outlawed in the latest judgement. "It's an immense victory for birds," it said.
France's National Federation of Hunters however said the ruling was "devoid of the slightest serious basis" and vowed to explore all further legal avenues.
"For us, traditional hunts are the very essence of our passion for hunting and will always be at the heart of the defence of our hunting practices," said its president Willy Schraen.
