REPORTAGE
After confinement, and while the summer holidays are just beginning, the authorities anticipate a great thirst for nature on the part of the French. So, to best preserve this nature, which some have learned to love during the crisis, a national campaign aimed at raising French awareness of biodiversity was launched, for the very first time, on Monday. During all the summer holidays, environmental inspectors will therefore be on the ground, both on land and at sea.
Contravention amounting to 135 euros
There will be 1,500 "environmental police" crisscrossing tourist areas all summer. So if you're boating in the Mediterranean, you might come across their gray uniform, and you might see them signaling you if you're standing over a meadow of underwater herbs. The latter, called posidonia meadows, are protected because they feed and shelter thousands of fish and seahorses. However, to drop anchor there risks destroying them.
Initially, the role of these agents will be primarily preventive. They will give advice, but if they notice a deliberate deterioration, it can go much further, explains the director general of the French Office for Biodiversity, Pierre Dubreuil. Whether at sea, in the mountains or in the forest.
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"When you ride a motorbike or quad in a prohibited natural area, our agents have the police power to draw up a fourth category ticket in the amount of 135 euros", he insists at the microphone of Europe 1 , remembering that this will be done whenever necessary.
These environmental police officers will travel through each of the regions of France. In the Mediterranean, they will advise you, for example, to use buoys rather than an anchor, or to download the Donia application, which maps rocks or grasses in the seabed, and thus avoids damaging them.