NEW PROTEST EMAIL ACTION AGAINST THE USE OF STONE CRUSH TRAPS IN FRANCE
stone crush trap
Send your personal protest message against this barbaric and brutal practice to France’s new Ecology minister Jean-Louis BORLOO
The background – a reminder
Back to the Stone Age
Since November 2005 thousands of songbirds may once again be trapped and crushed to death under stone slabs – and subsequently eaten as delicacies. The traps, set out on the limestone plateaux east of Avignon, are among the most brutal instruments in the European hunter’s arsenal.
A trap consists of a limestone slab weighing several kilograms which is propped up on twigs and wood slivers and strewn with juniper berries as bait. Birds coming to eat the berries brush against the twigs and are squashed under the slab or trapped in a cavity under the slab. The victims of this literally stone age hunting method are above all Thrushes, Robins, Pipits and Finches. As many of these species are protected under EU legislation the use of these indiscriminate traps (in French ‘tendelles’) was up until now forbidden throughout the EU. Under no external pressure, the French Minister for Ecology and Sustainable Development Mme Nelly Olin signed a law in November 2005 which permitted this brutal hobby to be practised again in the Départements Lozère and Aveyron. From the beginning of November until the end of January ‘tendelles’ can once again be set out in 31 communities between the Central Massif and the Tarn Gorge. The Minister justified the lifting of the ban with the development of a new form of trap in which the birds are only “trapped alive” under the stone slab “but not killed”.
Following an on the spot investigation by CABS an exponential projection of the area searched in relation to the total area of the plateau gave a total of between 75,000 and 125,000 stone crush traps in which countless migrant birds meet a painful end every season. Many victims are not killed outright but bleed to death, suffocate, die of thirst or die as a result of stress. Those which survive relatively unharmed have their neck broken by the hunter later.
The conclusion is that what the French hunters ‘sold’ the Minister as ‘discriminate’, ‘humane’ and ‘traditional’ is in reality cruel and environmentally-alien barbarism.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
Support the CABS/Proact protest action by sending an email to the new French Minister for Ecology (email link and text below):
MAIL TO MINISTER JEAN-LOUIS BORLOO
To: ministere@ecologie.gouv.fr
bcc: komitee@komitee.de, stone_crush_traps@proact-campaigns.net
Many thanks for your support,
David Conlin
for Proact International and Komitee gegen den Vogelmord
Subject:
BAN THE BARBARIC AND CRUEL STONE CRUSH TRAPS/STOPPEZ LES TENDELLES
To:
M Jean-Louis Borloo
Ministère de l’écologie, du développement et de l’aménagement durables
Monsieur le Ministre,
Dear Minister,
Depuis novembre 2005, des milliers d´oiseaux ont été
tué par des tendelles sur les causses à l´ouest du
parc national des Cévennes avec votre permission.
La légalisation de cette méthode de chasse tellement
cruelle, non sélective et quasiment incontrôlable est,
vu du terme de la préservation et de la protection des
animaux, un scandale que je condamne sévèrement.
Je vous somme d´interdire immédiatement cette forme de
chasse aux oiseaux et de mettre en oeuvre la directive
européenne sur la protection des oiseaux en France.
Je vous prie d´agréer, Monsieur le Ministre,
l´expression de mes salutations distinguées.
. … … … … … .
Your predecessor, Mme Nelly Olin, despite international disbelief and protest, permitted the practice of trapping birds in stone crush traps to be reintroduced in November 2005 on the flanks of the Central Massif west of the Cevennes National Park. This practice is still carried out with the concurrence of your ministry.
Thousands of song birds have been caught and killed in these traps, which despite assurances to the contrary, are indiscriminate and cause death and suffering to many bird species protected under French law and the EU bird protection guidelines.
The legalisation of such a cruel, non-selective and practically uncontrollable form of trapping is, from the point of view of species and animal protection, a scandal and we condemn it as an absolute disgrace to a civilised country in the 21st Century.
We call on you to re-open your file on this matter and once again ban this medieval form of bird trapping. We also urge you in your new ministerial post to commit yourself and your ministry unequivocally to a consistent implementation of the EU bird protection guidelines in France.
Sincerely,
(please add name and address)