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National Tree Day Planet Ark Home
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France disappoints hunters and greens with new law |
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| FRANCE: February 17, 2000 | ||
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PARIS - The French government disappointed both the Greens party and the country's militant hunters yesterday with a draft bill that would tighten laws on hunting but still leave them falling short of European directives.
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The bill would scrap a long-standing French law obliging landowners to allow hunters to shoot on their land and would also ban hunting on Wednesdays, when many school children have off or half days. But it still failed to set a date for ending the hunting season, a sensitive issue in France where sportsmen have traditionally hunted migratory birds beyond the January 31 deadline set by the European Union. Environment Minister Dominique Voynet, the French Green party leader who has been roughed up and booed by protesting hunters, also allowed night hunting for a five-year trial period in some regions where hunters insisted it was a tradition. Hunters form a powerful lobby in France, where their political wing Hunting, Fishing, Nature and Tradition won almost seven percent in last year's European Parliament election. Rugged rural men, angry at the government's attempts to change the hunting law that has hardly been amended since it was first passed in 1844, have simply ignored the European directive and continued to hunt migratory birds this month. Voynet is the only Green cabinet member in Prime Minister Lionel Jospin's coalition of Socialists, Communists and Greens. Parliament members reacted coldly to the draft, which is bound to be altered when discussed by the two houses of Parliament in March.
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REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
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