490 hectares of forest and meadow in the middle of the Vercors, the private reserve "Vercors vie sauvage" was bought by Aspas (Association for the protection of wild animals) thanks to donations from individuals.
The promise of this antichasse NGO is to protect this nature reserve against deforestation and the shots of hunters.
Almost half of the land is closed by a fence.
"It was a former private hunt, that is to say a place where hunters paid to shoot game, they also put their hands in their pockets to recover their trophies, like safaris in Africa", explains Madline Rubin , the director of Aspas.
"It's the opposite," said Rémi Gandy, the president of the Departmental Federation of Hunters of the Drôme.
The risk in "letting it happen" is that there is too much forest!
“Without management, within a few decades, there will no longer be a meadow.
However, in Drôme, forest species are doing well, our endangered species are those that require an open habitat such as the azure sanguisorb butterfly, ”he insists on management documents.
Another concern raised by hunters: the presence of species imported into the nature reserve, such as the Sika deer which comes from Asia and reproduces with the red deer, deer from temperate forests in Europe.
The NGO promises to isolate them and move them before lifting the fences.