With all the arguments about hunting the fox in Britain, it is interesting to look at how methods of hunting, trapping or shooting that are now deemed archaic in other countries are being dealt with. In France, for example, north of the Bassin d'Arcachon, mentioned here recently in connection with fish farming, the trapping of skylarks has been practised for many generations. In this more sensitive age, it is being phased out. At one time there were perhaps more than 100 operators licensed in that area; now, as they die, their licence is extinguished and no new one is issued. Today only nine trappers exist. And, if for any reason other than death, netting rights are not exercised for one season, likewise the rights lapse.
The trappers work from low hides of stone and rough thatch. A lure draws down the migrating birds and a net is shot out over them by a spring device. No one shelter or hide may take more than 156 birds per season. Every lark caught has to be declared to the authorities. If surveillance from surrounding dunes shows a higher estimate than the figures turned in by the trappers, heavy penalties are imposed. The surveillance is constant in all this, and the guardian himself is a former trapper, now turned ecologist. The committee with which he works consists equally of hunters ecologists.
All this comes from the same Irishwoman who was the source of the item on the fish ponds, but the question was not asked: has anyone travelling in western France recently come across lark pie in a restaurant? Or larks cooked in any form? Richard Jefferies wrote a century ago about small birds being trapped on a vast scale on the English Downs and appearing on many London menus.
The new French minister for the environment has been very forceful and wide-ranging in her recent speeches. A former leader of what we would call the Greens, she has told farmers that they use too much pesticide and they should pay more for water irrigation. Maybe she will turn her sights on the hunting scene. Though there is some sense in French governments not wanting to add to the exodus from the countryside by trampling over long-observed local customs, these people are probably mostly aged and less mobile.