EU Court of Justice rules against hunting of protected birds

A Member State may not authorise a method of catching birds which results in by-catches where these may cause significant damage to the species concerned, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled on Wednesday 17 March (Case C-900/19).

Based on the initiative of two environmental protection associations seeking to ban hunting with birdlime, the French Council of State has asked the Court to clarify the extent to which a Member State may derogate from the ban on certain methods of capturing protected birds provided for by the Birds Directive (2009/147/EC).

In its judgment, the Court indicates that Member States may derogate from the ban on certain hunting methods provided that these methods allow certain birds to be selectively captured. In assessing the selectivity of a method, account should be taken of the modalities of the method, the amount of catch involved for non-target birds and the damage caused to non-target species.

Thus, in the context of a non-lethal capture method resulting in by-catch, such as birdlime hunting, the selectivity condition is only met if the by-catch is limited (very small number of specimens taken incidentally for a limited period of time) and if the non-target species can be released with negligible harm.

The Court found that it was very likely that, despite cleaning, the birds captured would suffer irreparable damage, as the birdlime is likely to damage the plumage of all the birds captured, which was for the French Council of State to verify.

Furthermore, the European Court emphasises that the traditional nature of a method of catching birds is not in itself sufficient to establish that another satisfactory solution cannot replace that method. In particular, it notes that other options appear to exist, such as captive breeding and reproduction or the transport of legally captured birds.

In France, the hunting of thrushes and blackbirds has been banned since August 2020 pending the Court’s ruling.

See the judgment: https://bit.ly/3tAOMo1 (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)