Two illegal wild boar feeding sites, a practice at the heart of controversies over hunting, have been identified about sixty kilometers from Nîmes, and an investigation is underway to find those responsible, the Gard prefecture announced on Wednesday.
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“
The practice of feeding contributes to the development of an excessive population of wild boars which cause high damage penalizing agriculture, public safety and small wildlife.
As a result, it has been strictly prohibited in the Gard by prefectural decree since 2017,
”recalls the prefecture in a press release.
"
Hunting companies, which would perpetuate illegal feeding practices, will be vigorously prosecuted,
" she warns, adding that the two sites were discovered in Rivières on April 24 and 25.
National record in the Gard
With around 40,000 wild boars killed per year, the Gard, a department in which hunting companies have significant social weight, holds a national record "
which worries the public authorities and departmental hunting officials about the excessive nature of the wild boar populations
" .
"
In the name of the general interest, the shared objective is to reduce them sustainably and strongly to return to a balanced situation, preserving cultures, environments and public safety
", assures the prefecture, stressing that for hunters, this regulation will make it possible to reduce the compensation paid for agricultural damage.
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The prefecture of Gard has commissioned the lieutenants of the louveterie for an operation to destroy wild boars in Rivières and reserves the right to have recourse to it again "
for administrative firing on territories which do not comply with the regulations
". Anti-hunting activists regularly accuse hunters of practicing agrainage and foddering, modes of artificial maintenance of game overpopulation, which hunting societies deny.
As elsewhere in Europe, the wild boar population has multiplied in France in recent decades: 36,000 were killed in the early 1970s, 750,000 in 2017. For a long time, the hunting of this rare animal in the aftermath of the war, was waged "
in such a way as to ensure its preservation and even development
", underlined a parliamentary report in March 2019. That is, by avoiding killing breeding adults, especially sows, releasing wild boars into the wild or feeding them.
