A New Approach to Wildlife Management in France: Regional Guidelines as Tools for the Conservation of Biodiversity

Abstract

AbstractAt a time when the conservation of biodiversity has already inspired a number of public policies on nature, the ORGFSH (regional guidelines for the management of wildlife and its habitats) represent an attempt to rethink the French approach to wildlife management. This study of the way in which the ORGFSH were drawn up in three regions reveals considerable disparities and highlights the difficulties that arise from attempting to create chains of co‐operation (new groupings) between the various categories of actors, particularly the influential hunting world and their significant conflicts with environmental groups. The cumulative effect of a series of public policies on biodiversity is gradually refining the available tools and knowledge which can be applied in the context of consultation‐based territorial procedures. The ORGFSH afford an insight into the way the concepts of wildlife management they convey may be related to two very different worlds. On the one hand, they are still partially attached to the institutional models and alliances which have characterised the French countryside since the age of triumphal agricultural productivism, when the management of ordinary fauna belonged by right to hunting. On the other hand, they testify to the existence of a concept of environmental management derived directly from the model of biodiversity conservation.