Horses to prevent caravans from parking… This is the idea found by Franck Louvrier, the mayor of La Baule, to fight against the illegal and repetitive installation of Travelers on the land of the airfield near the Manège des Platanes, the equestrian center of the city. The idea is simple, occupy this large field covered with grass from the aerodrome with horses from the equestrian center located just a hundred meters away. With one stone, provide pasture for the horses, and hope that they dissuade the caravans from coming there.
Illegal and recurring installations
Because illegal Traveler settlements are recurring on this ground, more than a dozen in recent years. Still at the end of June, around forty caravans had entered the meadow and their evacuation had caused a major blockage of the town by Travelers.
The evangelical missionsthese large summer gatherings of Travelers, sometimes create divisions, confides to us a service station employee near Trignac who has welcomed the community every summer for more than twenty years. “It happens that families fall out with each other and that convoys decide to leave the official mission to occupy other land, without authorization”, she explains. Other times it is simply the missions themselves that “settle” illegally.
The town hall of La Baule must still have the agreement of the General Directorate of Civil Aviation, to install the horses, so in the meantime the city is already making arrangements: it has installed fences and positioned concrete pads on the access road, there are also municipal police patrols and video surveillance cameras.
Well-being for horses
On the side of the equestrian center, we are delighted with this decision for the horses: “we don’t want to go too far as long as nothing is signed. But it’s true that this land will allow us to provide them with maximum well-being. We only have paddocks on sand”, says Sarah, from the Manège des Platanes. It remains to erect fences and re-sow the meadow so that the grass is rich.
Those are more than a hundred horses who can benefit from paddocks on the grassfrom the beginning of next year.