The departmental headquarters of the OFB, tagged and burned, on January 22, 2025 in Trèbes, in Aude (AFP / IDRISS BIGOU-GILLES)
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.
“The OFB cannot be the scapegoat for the agricultural crisis,” declared Jean-Noël Rieffel, regional director of the OFB in Center-Val de Loire, who received a delegation of farmers. “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 Édouard Legras, its departmental president.
– “first line” –
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.
Questioned in the Senate on these attacks, the Minister of Ecological Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, expressed her “firmest support for the agents of the French Biodiversity Office, they who are on the front line in the protection of our environment , protecting the quality of our water and preserving our biodiversity.”
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.
Prime Minister François Bayrou described certain inspections by OFB agents as “humiliation” and “fault”, “a weapon in the belt in a farm already put on edge by the crisis”.
The OFB unions called on agents to stop their checks, particularly on farmers, and filed a strike notice for the day of January 31.
They ask, among other things, that Mr. Bayrou “cancel” his comments made regarding the OFB.
“The Prime Minister's teams will receive the management of the OFB and the union organizations this Friday and you can count on us to continue to carry out the OFB's missions loud and clear in full understanding with those controlled,” said Ms. Pannier -Runacher.
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