We have determined a number of parameters contributing to the current status quo:
- the myth postulating that hunting is necessary to regulate fauna
- a very rich and powerful lobby supported by politicians
- the aforementioned myth being picked up by local media
The fact that killing, tracking and torturing living beings is considered by a minor part of the population a recreational activity in our time and age is ethically unacceptable.
Hunting belongs to another age, where mankind was not advanced enough to understand that animals, to which we belong, are sentient. Allowing this activity is in fact negating scientific progress. Through the heavy impeding efforts against all possible recognition of these scientific discoveries, which are threatening the permissibility of hunting, there is unmistakably an awareness of these advancements on the part of hunters.
Furthermore, wildlife population numbers are constantly decreasing and many species are in danger of becoming extinct. Killing more of these individuals is counter-productive, illogical and irrational.
Beyond the many deaths of animals and deterioration of natural spaces, hunting is a great source of nuisance for the rural human population and increasingly the urban population as well (see our « News » webpage). In the last years, there have been a staggering number of issues related to the activity causing French citizens to feel unsafe in their own private gardens and homes. For a great majority of them, going to take a walk in the forest, when a hunt takes place is very frightening per say, but this has been amplified by the fact that more and more altercations take place between hunters and non-hunters, as the former engage in aggressive behaviour to keep the sole use of natural spaces. We are witnessing a monopolisation of natural spaces by a very small minority of armed individuals – 1.7% of the population (see our « News » webpage).
To go back to the main victim of hunting, that is wildlife, there also exists commercial hunts, which take place in enclosures for which hunters pay a considerable amount of money to kill defenseless animals trapped within a parameter.
Hunters claim to be necessary and « France’s first ecologists », which as we discuss in the « Refutation of Hunters’ Arguments » webpage is false. Unfortunately, these statements still influence a part of the population, who think that they are a « necessary evil », but the proportion of them has greatly diminished and continues to decrease thanks to social media, which has enabled a greater distribution of information.
When looking at the rhetorical mechanisms used by hunters, it is apparent that their sole aim is for their activity never to end. For instance, they demonise and decimate predators by labeling them « nuisances » or more recently the politically correct term, yet equal in meaning, « species likely to cause damages », because predators steal their preys.
Evidently, hunters do not stop at killing predators in France, they also decimate populations of migratory birds, which species for the most part are protected in almost every other European country.
Our condemnation of hunting rests on ethical, ecological and societal levels.
In France, hunting is an activity :
- wherein you kill animals for pleasure
- involving varying degrees of immense cruelty
- which goes against ecological needs
- which monopolises natural spaces for the benefit of a small minority
- which creates an atmosphere of war and insecurity
- which kills and wounds people, who are neither participating, nor observing; people who have nothing to do with hunting
CoRAC 