The Council of State on Monday judged illegal the hunts for pantes (nets) and matoles (cages) used against larks, judging them to be non-compliant with European law, in a decision on the merits which definitively annuls several government decrees taken in October 2022.
“No more de facto traditional bird hunting authorized in France”
“This is a great victory, because for the moment, no traditional bird hunting is de facto authorized in France,” welcomed the League for the Protection of Birds (LPO) to AFP.
The highest French administrative court had already dealt a severe blow to these ancestral hunts in May 2023 by annulling framework decrees of 1989 authorizing hunting with glue and with traps called tenderies on other species of birds, on which regularly relied on the government to, under pressure from hunters, authorize their use again. If the European “birds” directive of 2009 prohibits techniques for the mass capture of birds without distinction of species, an exemption is possible “provided it is duly justified and as long as there is no other satisfactory solution for capturing certain birds.
Concerning the pantes and matoles hunts on larks, the Council of State, contacted by LPO and One Voice, had already suspended the orders in October 2022. In its decision on the merits, the Council of State considers that justify these hunts in the name of respect for tradition “are not enough”. “The reason for the exemption” introduced in the decrees “lies mainly in the objective of preserving the use of a hunting method constituting a traditional practice which (…) cannot in itself justify the absence of other satisfactory solution”, it is indicated in the decision.
-25% larks since 1980
Furthermore, the judge considers that it has not been demonstrated that these types of hunting would be the only ones capable of capturing skylarks, which can also be hunted by shooting, for example. Finally, the Council of State judges that these types of hunting risk leading to significant accidental captures of other birds.
“The ministers like the intervening federations do not demonstrate that the bycatch resulting from the use of pantes and matoles (…) would actually only concern a small number of birds”, according to the decision. “It has also not been demonstrated that the damage caused to non-targeted captured birds could be considered negligible,” it added. Skylarks, once common birds in our countryside, have seen their numbers drop by 25% since 1980, according to the LPO.