“What is quite shocking is to see that the Ministry of Ecology must be called to order by the Council of State”, protests Thursday, June 2 on franceinfo Dominique Py, biodiversity and hunting expert within France Nature Environnement. The latter is one of the seven associations that have seized the Council of State to put an end to capercaillie hunting. The highest administrative court gave them their case on Wednesday, suspending until 2027 the hunting of this emblematic bird of the Pyrenean massif. “The workforce has been divided by five since the 1960s”emphasizes Dominique Py.
franceinfo: What motivated this procedure?
Dominique Py: It is the prolonged decline of the capercaillie. You should know that in the Pyrenees, the numbers of this bird have been divided by five since the 1960s. There is a set of threats hanging over the capercaillie. Among them is hunting. And despite this, the hunters refused to put an end to the hunting of this species. They continue to hunt in the five departments of the Pyrenees where the species is still present.
Despite everything, the Ministry of Ecological Transition had refused to ban capercaillie hunting?
Absolutely. For 15 years now, local associations in the Pyrenees, including France Nature Environnement, have been filing appeals before the administrative courts, department by department, to overturn the decrees of the prefects who authorize the hunting of this species. Each time, justice ruled in favor of the associations, that is to say that the administrative judges quashed these decrees. And despite this, the prefects have started to issue, year after year, the same decrees authorizing this hunt. We sent many letters to the Ministry of Ecology but we never managed to get the Ministry to intervene and put a definitive end to this hunt.
Why the ministry refused to ban the hunt ?
Simply because of the hunting lobby. And hunters claimed that the species is doing well enough, but it’s hard to see how a species whose numbers have been reduced by five could do well. A fortiori when this species is classified on the red list of threatened birds which is established in France. The capercaillie is classified as vulnerable. The species is also protected by a European directive. Successive governments have never respected this directive, which requires the protection of endangered species. And that is why we appealed to the Council of State to finally apply the right to justice and science.
The Council of State agrees with you. Five years of hunting ban, will this be enough for capercaillies to no longer be considered vulnerable?
In any case, this will give the capercaillies some respite and it is hoped that the ministry will also speed up the measures to protect this species. We’ll see in five years. If the situation has not improved, it will of course be necessary to renew this moratorium. It would seem logical to us, given the very strong decrease in numbers, to put these species as a protected species, which would allow to deploy even more protective measures. What is quite shocking in this affair is to see that the Ministry of Ecology, which is supposed to implement nature protection, must be called to order by the Council of State after 15 years of procedures, whereas these are things that he should have done spontaneously, without the need to go through the courts.