Question 14993 — hunting and fishing

Summary

Mr. Antoine Valentin draws the attention of the Minister of Ecological Transition, Biodiversity and International Negotiations on Climate and Nature to the essential and largely unknown contribution of hunting stakeholders to the conservation of the black grouse in the Alpine massifs and to the deleterious effects of recurring legal instability which is today weakening this commitment. The black grouse, emblematic bird of the subalpine level, sees its Alpine populations estimated between 14,000 and 20,000 adults according to the Observatory of Mountain Galliformes (OGM). If the species remains huntable under Directive 2009/147/EC known as the “Birds Directive”, its conservation status calls for increased vigilance. The main documented causes of the decline are well known to the OFB and the GMO: degradation and closure of habitats due to pastoral abandonment, tourist developments in wintering areas, inappropriate forest management and winter disturbance linked to unsupervised outdoor activities. Hunting pressure, strictly controlled by hunting plans and maximum authorized harvest (PMA) based on annual reproduction indices validated by the GMO, is not identified as a determining factor in decline by the available scientific literature. The reality on the ground is yet unambiguous: it is because the black grouse was hunted that the federations invested, over time, to preserve and restore its habitat. This apparent paradox is actually the very foundation of successful adaptive management. The departmental hunters' federations (FDC) and approved municipal hunting associations (ACCA) today constitute the operational backbone of knowledge and conservation of the species in the Alpine territories. Their action, carried out by trained volunteers and financed largely by contributions from the hunters themselves, covers missions of a considerable scale: annual demographic monitoring by song and pointing dog counts within the framework of GMO protocols, carrying out habitat diagnostics in the areas where the species is present, creation and maintenance of areas of peace and quiet. winter, marking of aerial cables dangerous for mountain avifauna, work to reopen environments and restore favorable habitats, awareness of users in winter sports resorts, Agrifauna conventions with the pastoral world. The Haute-Savoie Hunters’ Federation (FDC 74) concretely illustrates this reality. It has thus installed defenses, physical protection devices for areas of delivery and wintering of black grouse, in numerous stations in the department: Chamonix, Flaine, Les Houches, Le Grand-Bornand, Saint-Gervais, Samoëns, among others. These interventions, carried out in conjunction with ski area operators and municipalities, directly protect the sensitive areas for the winter survival of the species, where human disturbance is the strongest and most documented. This implication is not accessory: it is structural. Without the federations, no other actor, neither the State, nor the communities, nor the naturalist associations, today has the human resources, the territorial presence and the recurring financing necessary to carry out these missions on the scale of the Alpine massifs. However, for several seasons, the multiplication of contentious suspensions of prefectural orders opening hunting for black grouse, pronounced in particular in Haute-Savoie, in Hautes-Alpes and in Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, creates deeply harmful legal instability. If each court decision responds to its own contentious logic, their accumulation produces a systemic effect: the calling into question of the adaptive management framework which is nevertheless scientifically supported and above all a real risk of progressive disengagement of the federations and their volunteers. Hunters who can no longer practice their activity in a territory cannot be expected indefinitely to finance and ensure conservation management. In Haute-Savoie, the annual hunting plan is based on a rigorous approach: modest samples set by prefectural decree on the basis of GMO indices, compulsory marking, individual logbook, real-time entry of achievements. This exemplary framework deserves to be preserved and consolidated, not weakened by recurring legal insecurity. Consequently, the MP would like to know the Government's intentions on the following points: what institutional recognition and what financial support does the ministry intend to provide to the departmental hunters' federations and the ACCAs for their missions of scientific monitoring of mountain galliformes and restoration of habitats? and installation of protection devices: defences, cable markings, quiet zones, which today constitute the operational backbone of black grouse conservation in the Alps? Is the Government considering stabilizing, by regulation or by instruction to prefects, the doctrine for supervising black grouse hunting, based on GMO reproduction indices and the PMA, in order to secure legally the prefectural decrees and to put an end to an annual cycle of litigation which weakens the long-term commitment of actors in the field without demonstrated benefit for the conservation of the species? What concrete measures does the ministry intend to take to address the main factors of decline identified by the OFB and the OGM, unsupervised winter disturbance linked to outdoor activities, developments in areas wintering, closure of environments by pastoral abandonment, in a logic of equitable sharing of the conservation effort between all mountain users and not solely the responsibility of hunting actors? Does the Government intend to take the necessary measures to legally secure the framework for black grouse hunting, a sine qua non condition for maintaining the long-term commitment of the federations in the field, in order to guarantee the sustainability of the missions of demographic monitoring, habitat restoration and protection of quiet areas which today rely on their sole voluntary and financial investment? Finally, he asks him if the Government intends to ask the environmentalist associations behind the appeals to leave their Parisian offices in order to replace the hunters on the ground to protect the black grouse. He wishes obtain details on these questions, which involve both the sustainable preservation of the black grouse and the fair recognition of an exemplary field commitment, carried out for decades by hunters in the Alpine valleys.

Machine translation from French. The official text remains authoritative.

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