Le Figaro Bordeaux
Sabine Durand is in tears.
For the general secretary of the approved Association of professional freshwater fishermen of Gironde (AAPPED 33), the latest decision of the administrative court which suspended, on Monday, scientific lamprey fishing after a referral to the Défense des milieus association aquatic (DNA), is a knockout blow.
Already subject to a suspension of the decree authorizing conventional fishing in Gironde - which is awaiting judgment on the merits by the Council of State -, the thirty or so freshwater fishermen who make up this association counted, in order to survive, on the almost 700,000 euros allocated to the relocation of lampreys downstream of the Garonne, upstream of the Dordogne and in the Ciron.
Since January, the fishermen who had agreed to share this preservation work and the resulting sum had only moved 1,000 of the 20,000 lampreys they should have taken care of.
“One of us recently committed suicide, the youngest have credit, the oldest are 60 and do not have the right to unemployment.
I laid off two employees.
What are we going to do ?"
, sobs the farmer.
Before specifying:
“When we remove transport costs, 15,000 euros remained per fisherman.
This did not cover our expenses last year or this year.
DNA is exterminating us.”
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“To the end”
On the offensive against them, the Association for the Defense of Aquatic Environments, which with this new suspensive court decision, wins for the fourth time against the judges.
“We only want one thing, and that is for small-scale fishing to recover and take precedence over industrial fishing
,” immediately thunders its president Philippe Garcia.
“But, it was a question of capturing 20,000 lampreys in a translocation which was inevitably going to cause damage because these fishermen do not have the official capacity to transport such a mass while ensuring their survival”
.
The sixty-year-old, who moreover
“has no hope for the success of these operations”,
believes that they must
at least
“be piloted by real scientific organizations and controlled by government services”
.
It is also on this scientific basis, constituting a procedural defect, that the latest summary decision of the administrative court of Bordeaux suspends its operations: the prefectural decree authorizing them was taken in the absence of an evaluation of Natura 2000 impacts.
“It’s incomprehensible,”
argues Sabine Durand.
This association wants us to stop fishing, but when we take actions to preserve the species, we must also stop.
It’s extremism!”
Particularly worried about her future, the fisherwoman who says she
"no longer understands anything about ecology in France",
despairs at being
"in the middle of the ping-pong"
between the justice system which is demanding a Natura 2000 impact report and
" the prefecture which responds that the texts do not provide for it
.
A speech that Philippe Garcia does not hear that way.
“The fishermen would do well to understand that justice is in our favor, but that the fishing administration has not understood this.
It is not a question of permanently banning lamprey fishing, but of letting nature breathe so that the species regenerates and we can hope, later, to fish it out
.
Breathing which must last at least twenty years to be effective according to the defender of aquatic environments.
When contacted, the Gironde prefecture took note of this court decision and studied the follow-up to be given to this case.