VIDEO. Demonstration of the hunters: "Those who touch our traditions will have problems"

In Mont-de-Marsan, as in Amiens or Redon, thousands of people marched on Saturday to defend traditional bird hunts, deemed illegal by the Council of State, a "threatened rural world" and "endangered traditions" ".

"The hunters were the detonator but all the rurality is there", welcomes the director of the Federation of hunters of the Landes, Régis Hargues, in Mont-de-Marsan where a little more than 16,000 people marched according to the prefecture. Myriam, a Landaise, wife of hunter and feeder of palmipeds, lover of bullfighting, wants to be able to "transmit these traditions" to the younger generations. “It's not just hunting, it's a whole art of living,” she slips. "May the townspeople leave us alone!" Said a man next to her. “I'm sick of seeing my culture fall apart. We have already eradicated my language, Gascon, now it is the traditional hunts, lark, wood pigeon ... ", deplores Eric, 47, another Landais who has had enough of" the Taliban of Paristan "and" ideologues of the capital ”.

Read also Traditional bird hunts deemed "illegal" by the Council of State

In August, the Council of State ruled several hunting techniques with nets (pantes, tenderies) or cages (matoles) contrary to the European “birds” directive of 2009, which prohibits techniques for mass capture of birds without distinction of species caught.

In the week, however, the government put several orders for consultation to re-authorize some of these hunts, to the chagrin of environmentalists.

A measure interpreted as a gesture towards this very courted electorate.

Justice had already ruled illegal, in June, glue hunting, which consists of trapping blackbirds and thrushes on stems coated with glue, but which also leads to the capture of other species of birds.