Bird lovers have long denounced it as a barbaric French exception while local hunters argued it should be embraced as an age-old tradition.
On Wednesday, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that trapping songbirds with glue is illegal and cannot be authorised by the French state, handing a major victory to "twitchers’".
Using glue sticks to catch birds has been outlawed in Europe since the 1979 Bird Directive, except in specific circumstances where the practice is “controlled, selective and in limited quantities”. Since 1989, on these grounds France has permitted glue-trapping in five south-east departments on the grounds that it is “traditional”.
The first birds caught are placed in cages and act as lures for their feathered friends.
Last year, the European Commission threatened France with legal action and fines, prompting President Emmanuel Macron to suspend the practice pending a ruling by the EU court.
On Wednesday, the Court of Justice of the European Union announced that the French exception must end.
The judges ruled the practice was not selective — meaning different bird species were indiscriminately trapped — and contravened EU rules. Hunters, who have quotas for catching individual species, disagree.
France’s Bird Protection League (LPO). “The judgment is very interesting because it says that tradition is no excuse for this and that it is absolutely not selective, which is what we knew and argued."
The Bird Protection Association hailed the move as “a great victory…which it has been advocating for years”.
Glue trapping, it went on, was a "cruel and hateful" practice at odds with a society in which animal welfare was far more prominent than bygone eras. France should join other EU nations in outlawing it completely, it said.
Bird lovers argued that as well as capturing birds that glue hunters claim to be targeting, the traps also ensnare protected species. Hunters insist they free such birds, clean their feathers and let them go. Bird groups say they are often fatally injured by this stage and have released footage of scores of other birds — from robins and blue tits to warblers and finches — caught and killed.
In a statement, the EU court agreed that the captured birds can sustain “irreparable harm”, since the glue can damage feathers.
It also rejected the hunters’ arguments that the practice should be tolerated in the name of “maintaining traditional activities” saying these had no primacy over the EU Bird Directive.
“The court has taken into account animal suffering, which is a remarkable step forward,” said LPO president Allain Bougrain-Dubourg, who added: “I’m split between happiness and bitterness at having lost so much time to protect birds.”
Hunters refused to lay down their arms, with Eric Camoin, head of the national association for the defence of traditional thrush hunting, saying: “People who cry victory should re-read the court’s decision. It doesn’t ban anything but only passes on (the ruling) to the (French) State Council, which will now have to decide.”
“We’re going to prepare our case and present it to the State Council by inviting them to come and see the reality on the ground. The fight continues,” he said.
France’s State Council initially sided with the hunters but in 2019 asked the EU court to rule on its legality.
The bloc’s 2009 “birds directive” bans “methods of mass or non-selective capture or killing” of birds, notably glue trapping, but allows for exceptions when “there exists no other satisfactory method.”
Until this year, the French government fixed a quota of thrush and blackbird that hunters in five departments in southeastern France — Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, Alpes-Maritimes, Bouches-du-Rhône, Var and Vaucluse — could catch.
In a Tweet, France’s ecology ministry, Barbara Pompili welcomed the European stance, saying: “France decided to suspend glue trapping, considered a non-selective practice. The Court of Justice of the European Union upholds this measure for the protection of biodiversity.”
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