For the 2024-2025 season, the hunting plan in the Doubs plans to kill between 425 and 594 chamois. A scandal according to the association for the protection of wild animals (ASPAS) which does not understand such relentlessness against the mammal.
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Chamois hunting has already been open here since September 9 and will remain open until January 29, 2025. But in the Doubs, some are already worried about the animal and denounce a future massacre. “Why destroy the chamois in the Doubs?”is alarmed by Jean Chapuis, the local representative of the Association for the Protection of Wild Animals (ASPAS).
“The 2024-2025 hunting plan validated the destruction of a maximum of 600 chamois, which constitutes a serious environmental and biodiversity destruction by the slaughter of more than 30% of the populations of these emblematic mammals, without real and serious environmental reason”, advances the association which cries ecological scandal.
ASPAS evokes unfounded relentlessness against the mammal. “There are ten times more deer than chamois in the Doubs.assures Jean Chapuis to France 3 Franche-Comté. Because the animal is far from proliferating, he assures. The average growth rate of chamois populations in the Doubs, excluding hunting, predation and epidemics, would be around 15%, taking into account current climatic, agricultural and forestry conditions. It also has a natural predator here: the lynx, whose predation is estimated to be around 10% of chamois populations. In short, nothing according to him to justify such “massacre”.
The forested area is 230,000 hectares in the department, which gives a density of one chamois per 100 wooded hectares. We are not invaded!
Jean Chapuis, Association for the Protection of Wild Animals (ASPAS).
“No forestry and agricultural damage is scientifically documented and attributable to the chamois species, protests Jean Chapuis. They eat a little grass, it's true, but they don't deserve the death penalty, we have to stop the madness !”
“ASPAS only seeks to create buzz, regrets Jean-Maurice Boillon, the president of the Departmental Federation of Hunters (FDC) of Doubs. There have been samples taken in the department for 20 years. There is no chamois problem, there is just anti-hunting!”
On its Facebook site, the Federation even talks about a “fox” deliberately inflating the number of bracelets that will be distributed to hunters this season. Above all, it reminds us that it isa Departmental Wildlife Management Commission which sets quota allocation ranges according to species and different zones. This commission brings together all nature stakeholders: state services, hunters, farmers, foresters, the French Biodiversity Office, lieutenants of louveterie, the association of private rangers, environmental defense associations and scientific experts.
And it is based on counts carried out in the field before setting its objectives. The number of chamois is in decline in the Doubs: 1,140 animals in 2024 compared to 1,396 in 2023. But, affirms Pierre Feuvrier to France 3 Franche-Comté, “of the three species subject to a hunting plan this year, deer, roe deer and chamois, we had made proposals below the figures finally validated by the State services”.
For the technical and scientific director of the Federation, there should be no mistaking the figures. The range is between a minimum of 425 and a maximum of 594 animals to be sampled, “knowing that the completion rate is 90%” he specifies. “No decision is taken at random, we don't do this with a wet finger, insists Pierre Feuvrier. No hunter is for the elimination of a species.”
And he adds that samples have changed very little over ten years in the department. “Since 2014, an average of around 440 chamois have been killed each year. The figure was 576 at most in 2022. Hunters don't do what they want and there are also state-mandated minimums.”
We have maintained a fair balance for 20 years. We adapt our hunting plans to control the herd, that's all. If we allow animals to proliferate, we are heading for real health disasters.
Jean-Maurice Boillon, president of the Departmental Federation of Hunters (FDC) of Doubs.
As for the damage caused by chamois, it is very real, correct the hunters. “We know that six chamois in a pasture graze as much as one cattleexplains Jean-Maurice Boillon. With groups of more than 20 animals, it quickly creates havoc.”
And to clarify that the chamois is not the favorite game of Franche-Comté hunters. “It’s a stalking hunt, on approach, in the Alsatian style, which is not at all in our habitsindicates Jean-Maurice Boillon. It’s not our favorite hunt, far from it.”
Arguments which do not convince animal defenders at all. “It’s not overnight that we’re going to stop this killing, regrets Jean Chapuis. Our goal is to inform people. 99% of the inhabitants of Doubs do not know that chamois are hunted here. It’s our heritage, our common good, it must be preserved.”
