The French justice system sentenced this Wednesday a 62 year old woman by beating a female lynx to deatha protected species, which had attacked one of his chickensreported the lawyer for one of the civil parties.
A court in Strasbourg, in northeastern France, sentenced her to pay 30,000 euros ($34,860) to animal defense associations and three months in prison with a suspended sentence, indicated Pauline Laizet, a lawyer for One Voice and the Athénas center, specialized in lynxes.
The events took place on October 18, 2024, in Niederbronn les Bains, a town of 4,000 inhabitants located in a wooded area in northeastern France.
The woman quickly went out to her garden because one of her five chickens was being attacked. After trying to scare away the predator, which the accused said she had mistaken for a cat, He picked up a stick and hit him violently on the head.
After «several blows in a lethal area,» suffering two skull fractures and a «subdural hematoma,» the young, 9.2-pound, starving female did not survive, according to the autopsy report. Neither does the chicken.
The trial
At the hearing on March 27, the accused said that she went into «panic» when she saw the predator and that she hit him to make him let her go.
For the civil parties, «the loss of a lynx is invaluable for the ecosystem», since this species, of which There are only about 150 copies left throughout France, it is in «critical danger of extinction.»
The sentence handed down this Wednesday is «satisfactory,» commented Laizet, considering that the real cost that the actions of preservation and reintroduction of wild fauna entail for the associations was taken into account.
However, Muriel Arnal, president of the One Voice association, considered the sentence of «three months of conditional prison» insufficient, when there are «so few lynxes left.»
«It does not send a message of firmness to the poachers who dedicate their time to kill protected animals«he added.
Europe’s largest cat, long hunted for its fur or as a trophy, had disappeared from France before its return in 1974, thanks to reintroductions carried out in Switzerland.
AFP Agency.
GML
