Rillette spent happy days with his human family in Chaourche, in Aube. But that was before. Before a decision by state services threatening this wild boar with euthanasia. To support Elodie, its owner, the town's merchants' association will organize a white march on January 11, according to France 3 Champagne-Ardenne. A petition aimed at saving Rillette has already collected nearly 170,000 signatures.
The animal was adopted in April 2023 by Élodie who “found him in agony in the middle of his trash,” says France 3. Rillette was then only a little boar weighing 3 kilos. But since then, the beast has grown a lot and now weighs around a hundred. Although she has an enclosure of 1,200 m2 on Elodie's farm, the sow is threatened with euthanasia because according to the law, keeping a wild animal at home is strictly prohibited.
“It’s really like a dog”
To comply with standards, the breeder had taken steps to declare the animal to the prefecture. Result: the services of the DDETSPP (Departmental Directorate of Employment, Labor, Solidarity and Population Protection) and the French Biodiversity Office (OFB) explained to her that she would have to make a choice between two solutions. Euthanize it for safety reasons or release it into the wild. But the animal having been domesticated, it could not survive there.
“We live isolated: our first neighbor is five kilometers away. She lives in the stables with us, she has her basket and sleeps in the hay. It’s really like a dog, she comes back to us, better than our own dogs,” the owner told France 3.
A retirement in Charleville?
For several months, the owner of Rillette has started a standoff with the authorities and has received numerous messages of support around the world. Not enough for the Troyes prosecutor who repeated in a press release dated December 17 that the detention of a wild boar, a “non-domestic species”, is “irregular”.
However, the mayor of Charleville-Mézières Boris Ravignon proposed that his town welcome Rillette, explains France 3. He had previously already found an enclosure for Toto, another wild boar. Let's hope Rillette is as lucky.
