Hunting, a debate that escalates as the election approaches

"I love it, I love it. I almost prefer to find than to kill, to know that I was not wrong and that the animals are there," whispers this 62-year-old farmer, who has been hunting for decades, every Sunday.

All day long, he and his companions, eight "local children" and two townspeople, dressed in their orange jackets, will lead the wild boar hunt.

"A passion", "an emotion", unfailingly linked to "the love of nature", they proclaim, very aware of being at the heart of a tense social debate, which is always exacerbated with the approach of an election.

A very heterogeneous electorate, cajoled - with the exception of environmentalists - by all the contenders for the supreme office.

Shortly after his election, Emmanuel Macron had thus halved the price of the national hunting license (from 400 to 200 euros) and participated in a "hunting table", the exhibition of game after a beaten, at the Château de Chambord .

Its Minister of Ecology Nicolas Hulot had theatrically resigned in 2018, protesting against the weight of "lobbies", including that of hunters.

Tensions

The candidate for Chasse, Pêche, Nature et Traditions (CPNT), who defended rurality, won more than 4% of the votes in the 2012 presidential election.

"There is of course an electoral context, we take much more care of hunters than hikers or mushroom pickers, because they weigh more in the debate and they are very well organized", sighs Guy Hervé, president. of the Bird Protection League (LPO) of Yonne.

"Obviously we are a weight. And we will sell our vision of things for 2022", recently asserted Willy Schraen, the all-powerful boss of the National Federation of Hunters (FNC), relying on the image of rural France, of lands and traditions, which the candidates for the presidency seek to recover.

A part of the hunters, however, are city dwellers or neo-rural dwellers.

Like Thierry, a Parisian in the process of settling definitively in the Morvan, who came hunting five years ago, who today regrets "the total incomprehension and the tensions" between pro and anti-hunting.

"We have completely false representations of hunters, we see them as meat-eaters who seek to kill, kill, kill. Me, what I see is respect, and days with friends in nature", defends this former teacher.

The recurring conflict has only worsened in recent years, with the growing importance in the public debate of questions linked to ecology, animal welfare and the sharing of nature.

No weekend hunting?

In the national forest of Branches, in the Yonne, wild signs are stuck on the trees at each entry of the path: "Hunting on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays. Dangerous walks".

And exasperation is mounting among opponents, also very organized, reinforced by a series of accidents in recent months, which has revived the debate on security.

Their number has certainly fallen steadily for 20 years, but seven people were still killed during the 2020/2021 hunting season (not very active due to the health crisis) against 11 in 2019/2020.

A petition calling for a ban on hunting on Wednesdays and Sundays garnered more than 120,000 signatures this fall and prompted the Senate to create a committee on security.

Environmental candidate Yannick Jadot proposed a ban during weekends and school holidays, sparking an outcry.

"Me, I'm like everyone else, I work the week. Hunting is the weekend", exasperated Christian, a member of the beaten of Pouques-Lormes.

France is the only country that allows you to practice every day during the season, while Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands and even Portugal have established one or more non-hunting days.

"Regulation"

In addition, the number of species hunted in France (90), some of which are classified as threatened, is the highest in Europe, to the chagrin of the protectors of animals.

They have been fighting for years to obtain the prohibition of certain traditional or non-selective hunts, such as glue.

The Council of State agreed with them but "it's a constant struggle, for each species", explains Guy Hervé, of the LPO.

"The LPO is not anti-hunting, it is against certain cruel hunts or hunts targeting endangered species," he insists, saying on the other hand that he understands the "regulation" argument advanced by wild boar hunters, a proliferating species which ravages crops in France.

But for the activist Pierre Rigaux, former member of the LPO advocating the total ban on hunting, "the positions are definitely irreconcilable".

"We can negotiate on the margins and coat the debate with blah on regulation, on the ethics of the hunter, on the fact that the animal fights on equal terms ... But basically, the debate cannot succeed. You cannot ask a bullfighter to come to an agreement with an anti-bullfighting ".

© 2022 AFP