The population of this emblematic bird of the Pyrenean massif has been divided by five since the 1960s.
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Black plumage, eyes highlighted in red and a tail in white spotted with white. The Grand Tétras des Pyrénées can no longer be hunted on metropolitan territory, at least until 2027. The Council of State validated, Wednesday 1
A year ago, they had seized the highest administrative jurisdiction, after the refusal of the Ministry of Ecological Transition to prohibit the hunt for volatile. In its decision, the Council of State considered that “the hunt for the Grand Tétras is not compatible with the maintenance of the species and that it is necessary to suspend it throughout the metropolitan territory of France during A sufficient duration to allow the reconstruction of the species in the various sites of its distribution area “.
Because, since the 1960s, the Grand Tétras des Pyrénées has been more and more rare on the edge of the forest, in the bushes of blueberries which he appreciates so much. Today it is classified as “vulnerable” by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature in its French red list of endangered species . According to estimates, the staff of the species have been divided by five in sixty years and continue to retreat by 2.1 % each year. Four thousand specimens were thus identified in 2021 in the Pyrenean massif, against nine thousand in the 1960s.
However, the species has been protected by a European directive since 1979. If the text does not prohibit hunting for the Grand Tetra of the Pyrenees, it regulates it. “The large tetra can be the subject of hunting acts, but there is a condition: not compromising the storage efforts of the species”, details Hervé Hourcade, lawyer for FNE Midi-Pyrénées. The departments of departments can thus set a maximum number of large tetras that hunters are authorized to take each year, depending on the demographic evolution of the species.
This method is also defended by the Ministry of Ecological Transition under the name of “Adaptive Management”. In the same way, this strategy consists in assessing the workforce of a species annually to fix the sampling ceilings. In April 2021, Bérangère Abba, then Secretary of State for Biodiversity, had refused to prohibit the hunting of the Grand Tétras to favor “the implementation of adaptive management” for this species.
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