Hunting: how to fight against wildlife diseases?

Present in our territories for a large part of the year, hunters monitor and warn of health problems affecting wildlife. For this, hunters and the French Office for Biodiversity (OFB) created the SAGIR network. This is an epidemiological surveillance tool for wild birds and mammals.

This surveillance is based on a partnership between the Hunters’ Federations and the OFB. Initiated in 1955, this system continued to consolidate and finally became formalized in 1984 by taking the name SAGIR: Monitor for Action. This participatory network relies on a group of nature observers, often volunteers: hunters, naturalists and technicians from the Federations and the OFB, but also from veterinary analysis laboratories.

Contact a federal technician

It meets several objectives such as: monitoring known diseases and early detection of new diseases; contribute to the knowledge of pathogens shared between domestic animals and wild animals, but also of diseases transmissible to humans (zoonosis); participate in the detection of unintentional effects of pesticides on wildlife; and help protect the health of wildlife as well as that of citizens.

This network has made it possible to highlight several episodes of wildlife poisoning, the detection of the bacteria responsible for tuberculosis in red deer or the virus responsible for swine fever in wild boars.

Each hunter can, when he notices the suspicious death of a wild animal, contact a federal technician. This collects the animal, completes a specific form depending on the damage observed and sends it to the Departmental Laboratory for analysis (autopsy, bacteriology, virology, etc.).

Training for hunters

The cost of the analyzes is covered by the Hunters’ Federation. In the event of a high-risk disease (e.g. avian influenza), all stakeholders in the SAGIR network are mobilized and specific provisions can be put in place, including vigilance or containment zones.

To go further, each year the FDC81 offers “Initial examination of wildlife” training for Tarn hunters. At the end of this training, each candidate becomes capable of identifying a certain number of wildlife diseases, particularly in animals taken during hunting. This training is all the more important when you want to promote venison in short circuits.