Emmanuel Macron pleaded, Thursday, July 3, to prevent the establishment of the wolf there “Where there is pastoralism”. “We are not going to let the wolf develop and that it goes in massifs where it is in competition with activities that are ours”added the head of state during a trip to Aveyron. “And so that means that it is necessary, as we modestly say, to take it more [c’est-à-dire autoriser qu’un plus grand nombre de canidés soient abattus] »he insisted.
The Head of State argued that the presence of the bear, of the wolf “And even vulture” led the breeders to leave their animals ” down “. “And so we have lands that again become wasteland, brush, and suddenly what’s going on: I bet it, in four years, we will have fires”he pressed.
“All the people who invent rules and who do not live with animals in places where there is the bears which redesigns or the wolf, whether they go to spend two nights”he still launched, claiming to know “The anxiety that it represents” and castigating the accumulation of rules imposed on breeders.
“No scientific foundation”
The president is based in particular on the recent decision, taken at European level, to downgrade the status of the wolf, which has become a species “Protected” and no longer “Strictly protected”an evolution denounced by defenders of biodiversity.
On May 28, the Minister of Agriculture, Annie Genevard, said before the Senate that on May 12 there had already been “759 attacks and 2,617 predated animals”causing “Considerable damage” to breeders. At the end of June, the government had taken an order authorizing the defense shots of cattle and equine breeders against wolves even if their herd was not attacked.
Contacted by the France-Presse agency to comment on the words of Emmanuel Macron, Cédric Marteau, of the League for the Protection of Birds, believes that“Excluding wolves from breeding areas is not realistic and is not a scientific basis” because “Wolves live in large territories that it is impossible to divide”. According to him, “The challenge is to continue the work undertaken with breeders and to strengthen the measures to limit interactions with herds”.
