The French Biodiversity Office (OFB) was once again targeted on Wednesday, its departmental headquarters in Aude having been degraded in Trèbes, near Carcassonne, and its training center in Loiret blocked.
In Aude, the entrance to the OFB representation was tagged and its gate set on fire, noted an AFP photographer.
“From the dealers” was painted in green paint on a low wall, next to the burnt gate, in reference to comments made by an OFB agent on France Inter. He declared that if the farmers no longer want to see us on their farms, it's the same as if the drug dealers asked the police to no longer come to the cities.
The police opened an investigation.
To denounce these comments, around forty farmers from Rural Coordination also blocked the entrance to the Bouchet training center, located in Dry in Loiret, a site specializing in security training during police intervention. environment and hunting.
A delegation of farmers was received by the regional director of the OFB for an hour and trailers of sand and flour – believed to represent cocaine – were dumped in front of certain entrances to the site, noted a journalist from the 'AFP. A dead wild boar was also left by one of the tractors in front of the main building.
“The OFB cannot be the scapegoat for the agricultural crisis,” declared Jean-Noël Rieffel, regional director of the OFB in Center-Val de Loire. “We are rather here to support them in the changes” to be made “to ensure that this biodiversity is preserved”.
-The Loir-et-Cher Rural Coordination considered the exchanges “cordial with those responsible for the OFB, particularly on waterways and ditches, but we want something concrete”, recalled Edouard Legras, its departmental president.
In recent days, actions led by farmers against the OFB have been recorded, for example in Toulouse where farmers' unions dumped waste in front of the regional headquarters of the OFB and caused damage.
The more than 3,000 OFB agents, including 1,700 in the field, are responsible for enforcing the rules regarding the use of pesticides, removing hedges or respecting drought orders, but also for controlling hunters, to fight against poaching or trafficking in protected species.
Relations have worsened with the rural world since the crisis which shook the profession last year, with some farmers complaining about controls considered intimidating, and since the declarations of the Prime Minister, François Bayrou, during his general policy declaration.
Mr. Bayrou had described certain inspections by OFB agents as “humiliation” and “mistakes,” “a weapon in the belt in a farm already put on edge by the crisis.”
The OFB unions denounce “repeated attacks, orchestrated by a large majority of agricultural unions”, having “received more than sympathetic government attention”.
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