These police custody are carried out as part of an investigation into the death of a bear on November 20, 2021, in Seix, during a search. The hunting federation has planned to demonstrate on Friday in front of the gendarmerie of Saint-Girons, in Ariège, reports France Bleu Occitanie.
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Posted on 02/06/2022 17:52
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Eight hunters have been summoned and have been placed in police custody since Wednesday, as part of the investigation into the death of a bear in November 2021 in Seix, Ariège, reports France Bleu Occitanie on Thursday June 2. The hunting federation of the department “finds that the method is deplorable” and calls to demonstrate from 9 a.m. Friday in front of the Saint-Girons gendarmerie, where the hearings will continue until Friday.
The shooter was heard for nearly 8 hours. This 70-year-old man had been seriously injured. The bear had it “grabbed by the legs in a very savage way and dragged more than 15 m”, told France Bleu Occitanie Jean-Luc Fernandez, the president of the Ariège hunting federation. It is upwind after these placements in police custody: “What upsets us all, we the actors of the territory, is the fact that the hunter who had the audacity to save his life, who is now severely handicapped, is summoned at 9 a.m. and questioned until 10 p.m. hours. Like a war criminal. So we find the method particularly violent.”
Jean-Luc Fernandez estimate that the problem is with the bears, not the hunters. He denounces a proliferation of these animals. “In the Ariège mountainshe explains, many things make us say that there are many births of cubs. So we have to find a solution.” According to him, the problem is not the reaction of the hunters but the danger that these animals represent. “I know the culpritsays the hunter. Yesterday it was a hunter who had a gun in his fingers and who was able to defend himself, who was dragged for 40 m in the woods and who saw death happen”.
“The day a family will find themselves between a bear and her cubs, they will be torn to pieces.”
Jean-Luc Fernandez, president of the Ariège hunting federationat franceinfo
Jean-Luc Fernandez does not understand why the hunter who shot the bear is “today dragged before specialist gendarmes, who have come specially from neighboring departments to question someone who is very disabled and very traumatized by what he has experienced”. The president of the Ariège hunting federation ensures that these hunters have many supporters: “The entire department, the departmental council and its president, the chamber of agriculture and its president, the pastoral federation and its president and the federation of hunters, we will be present from 9 a.m. in front of the gendarmerie of Saint-Girons to accompany the last two ‘delinquents’ and show our support.”
On November 26, the Foix public prosecutor’s office opened a judicial investigation against X for the destruction of a protected species and for illegal hunting in a hunting and wildlife reserve.