Animal survival is at stake, they say.
In a petition posted online, a wildlife rescue center calls for an "immediate moratorium on hunting" to be put in place due to the fires and drought that have hit several areas of France this summer.
A call supported this Friday by the deputy and national secretary of EELV Julien Bayou, reports The Huffington Post.
“Generalized drought, almost all of the small streams and dry forest ponds, higher temperatures, repeated heat waves, forest fires in departments where they had never occurred.
The whole of the biodiversity is bloodless, and many species experienced significant mortality or reproductive failures during this summer, ”deplores the Center Athénas, a wildlife conservation center in Burgundy-Franche-Comté.
"As of August 15, the early opening of wild boar hunting will launch dogs, 4x4s and armed men into the wild to track down, kill animals and disturb all the hard-hit wildlife", continues the organism.
“Destabilized natural environments”
"We demand an immediate moratorium on hunting and the penalization of grazing in the forest, a practice which destabilizes natural environments for the sole production of wild boar meat on the hoof, profitable for the federations", continues the center in its petition which brings together more than 48,000 signatures this Friday evening.
To read also "In our lifetime, we will not see the lost forests again": after the fires, should we replant identically?
Questioned by the Huffington Post, Julien Bayou indicated that he had sent an “urgent” request on the question to the Minister of Ecological Transition Christophe Béchu.
"Nature, deer and other animals are struggling to recover from this summer," he told the news site.
The wild boar hunt was able to resume on August 15 in the context of driven hunts targeting vermin.
In Aveyron, however, the recovery was delayed until August 17 due to the drought affecting the departments and increasing the risk of fire.
