Campaigners call for French marmot hunting ban as climate pressures mount

Animal rights campaigners are preparing protests and petitions to urge the French government to ban the hunting of Alpine marmots. Open season on these rodents, which belong to the squirrel and groundhog family, starts in September, just weeks before they enter five- to six-month winter hibernation.

Although the marmot is not classified as a threatened species in France, campaigners say its numbers are reportedly declining due to the climate emergency. Pauline di Nicolantonio, president of the Association for Justice for Savoie Animals (AJAS), which has protested marmot hunting for the last two years, stated that the issue is fundamentally moral.

She said telling people that marmot hunting is allowed in France often shocks them, noting the animal’s popularity and symbolic status in Savoie and across the Alps, where it appears as a logo in tourist offices. Plant-eating marmots inhabit mountainous regions of Europe and North America, typically living in family groups led by a dominant pair, and emit a high-pitched alarm when threatened.

In late summer and autumn, their body mass can increase to up to 8kg as they store food for hibernation. There are 15 marmot species globally, and while they were once hunted for meat, fat and fur, today hunting is permitted in parts of the US and Canada, and in France, Switzerland and Austria, but prohibited in Italy and Germany.

An average of 1,000 marmots are shot annually in France. For generations, the animal has featured in French children’s folk tales and poems, including one by Goethe set to music by Beethoven, served as a mascot for Alpine ski resorts, and starred in a well-known milk chocolate television advert.

However, campaigners argue this cuddly image masks a violent reality, as marmots spend much of their waking lives in fierce dominance struggles that can involve killing parents or offspring. Christophe Bonenfant, a scientist at France’s National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) based at the University of Lyon, studies marmots in the Grande Sassière alpine nature reserve.

He and his colleague Rébecca Garcia have observed that climate-related disruptions are worsening the animals’ social stability, making territorial battles more brutal. They noted that although marmots are not endangered, females are producing fewer pups, and the combination of increased aggression and smaller litters is causing a steady population decline.

Bonenfant explained that social groups are breaking up more quickly, with dominant animals changing more frequently. As a herbivore, the marmot is low in the food chain but serves as prey for eagles, foxes and occasionally badgers, and its burrowing helps aerate the soil.

He said hunting marmots does not raise conservation concerns, so the debate centres on the morality of killing animals for fun. While local authorities set strict limits on how many marmots can be killed and the season lasts at most a month, AJAS seeks a national ban like the one introduced in Italy in 1992.

French farmers claim marmots damage fields and machinery by digging holes, but the National Hunters Federation maintains that hunting is strictly supervised and regulated, arguing there is no justification for a ban since the species is not threatened, not slated for protection, and numbers are reportedly rising.

Di Nicolantonio countered that AJAS knows marmots are affected by the climate crisis and finds the data worrying, adding that hunters often fund scientific reports claiming high marmot numbers to justify hunting.

She concluded that hunting marmots is cruel, absurd and unpopular, but persists due to tradition, noting that while marmots were once eaten, today they are shot purely for recreation. fixtures squad