He trapped robins: an octogenarian sentenced in Toulon

Like Marcel Pagnol, Daniel was born in Aubagne. Like him, he learned poaching in the hills of Provence a long time ago.

But if, for little Marcel, it was the enigmatic Lili who introduced him to the hunt for aludes, the first step towards catching robins and other blackcapped warblers, for Daniel, the “hunting passion” even illegal was born alongside his grandfather in the fifties.

“Hunting is my whole life”

“Hunting is my whole life” proclaims at will the octogenarian, prosecuted this Monday before the criminal court of Toulon for unauthorized destruction of protected species in recidivism.

The accent is singing. The hesitant tone. “I acknowledge the facts and I bitterly regret. I won’t do it again.”

On October 27, 2020, at Ribouxduring a regional glue hunting control operation, agents from the French Biodiversity Office come across an old acquaintance, Daniel, already sentenced in 2017 for having hunted robins.

At first glance, everything is in order. The thrush hunt is open, the hunter in possession of his papers. Except that the pensioner uses a tape recorder to attract prey.

That in addition to six dead thrushes, three corpses of robins are in his possession. And that in the immediate vicinity, fifteen traps for rigaou are discovered hanging in mastic pistachio trees.

Tentative de corruption

On the way to his home in La Cadière where a search is to take place, Daniel makes his case worse: he offers several times to money to the agents of the OFB so that they refrain from writing their report… “I said it jokingly” tempts the interested party to the bar. – “Three times?” is surprised the president Anne-Sophie Houbart.

In the hunter’s villa, fishing will be good for investigators: near 270 robins, plucked and ready to eat, are found in the refrigerator and the freezer. A quantity that suggests a possible commercialization.

“But it was not retained, for lack of evidence” concedes prosecutor Karina Garcia. “I had a large stock because we were coming out of confinement, explains the defendant. This is all for my family. We eat skewers three or four times a year.” At 20 “little ones” per skewer, the number of “victims” rises quickly…

As for the few cash deposits recorded in Daniel’s bank account, he claims that they come from the – illegal – sale of olive oil. “Rather the sale of olive trees which he does not remember” specifies Me Vanessa Kayal in defense. “You mustn’t get the wrong file, continues the lawyer. He only knew that, the Pagnol hunt. He is a passionate hunter, no doubt too much, not an industrial poacher.”

A passion that has a legal price. According to its recent case law (1), the court sentences Daniel to a six-month suspended prison sentence, a fine of 1,500 euros and a three-year ban on possession of a weapon.

His hunting license is withdrawn for the same period. He will also have to pay 16,100 euros in non-pecuniary damage to the seven nature protection associations which had brought civil action (2).

1. In September 2022, a pensioner was given a six-month suspended prison sentence and a heavy fine for taking thousands of robins at Revest.

2. The Brigitte Bardot Foundation, the Association for the Protection of Wild Animals, the PACA Bird Protection League, UDVN 83, France Nature Environnement PACA, One Voice and the Stéphane Lamart Association.