“It’s a bomb.” This is what it says on a video who would like to be resounding Eric Lebec, the former director of communication of the National Hunting Office – today the French Office for Biodiversity. His thesis: if the wolf returned to France in a natural way in the Alps from Italy, we would have helped him at the end of the 1990s to artificially cross the Rhone valley. Worse still: still according to Eric Lebec, the National Hunting Office would have been aware of these intrigues and would have done nothing to prevent them – and this, completely illegally. A “bomb”, indeed, if at least his words were true. The problem is that at this point they are not. On the contrary.
“I do not have the names of the people who transported the wolves nor the number of the vehicles, recognizes Eric Lebec from the outset, questioned by L’Express. What I do know, on the other hand, is that at the At the time, the thesis according to which these animals had been helped to cross the obstacle constituted by the Rhone Valley – with a river, a motorway, a national road and railway lines – was considered obvious within the National Hunting Office. Everyone said so, in particular Yves Tachker, the director of research and development.”
He continues: “I am not saying that the National Hunting Office played an active role in the transport of the wolves – associative activists were able to take care of it. I affirm on the other hand that the ONC knew [par] who and how wolves were transported across the Rhone Valley and that she did nothing to oppose it. However, this is illegal because it is forbidden to capture and transport a protected species if you do not have instructions to do so. Therefore, when such actions take place, it is the duty of a public institution of an administrative nature to intervene. It was not the case.”
Eric Lebec is a calm man, who argues clearly and calmly. But all the same, we are surprised. It is not easy to approach a wolf, even less to capture it. How would we have done? “It’s very simple. All you have to do is place a food that is interesting for a wolf in a cage. It goes in. You close the cage and then you can move it from one place to another.”
We are still surprised. At that time, the National Office of Hunting did not really pass for a den of militant ecologists. Eric Lebec willingly agrees. “Its leaders were often hunters and rather close to breeders. But what do you want? On the one hand, they received instructions from the Ministry of the Environment, led by the ecologist Dominique Voynet, and they had to obey. on the other hand, it was an opportunity for this Office to exist, to be perceived as useful, to obtain more resources.”
We are always surprised: why reveal today facts that date back to the end of the 1990s? “Because a farmer from the Jura who suffers from the presence of this predator recently asked me for this interview. I agreed to answer him to help the shepherds, who are forced to live with a wild animal which makes life impossible for them.”
We could therefore see Eric Lebec as a new whistleblower. We could… if the facts he puts forward were corroborated by reality. However, the two points on which he bases his argument are not.
“Everyone said so”. All the former executives contacted by L’Express deny this assertion. Starting with Yves Tachker: “It’s nonsense. This thesis has never been issued. The wolves were very well able to cross the Rhone Valley in a natural way.” Even formal denial from Gérard Tendron, who was director general of the National Hunting Office between 1999 and 2003. “I have never heard of this theory, he assures. The only hypothesis is the return nature of the wolf. Eric Lebec is a fabricator who we quickly got rid of.” His predecessor, Jean-Marie Ballu, is on the same line. “I have never heard anyone say that. And besides, if that had been the case, the ONC would not have tolerated it and would have intervened to oppose it.”
The Rhone Valley obstacle. “I live near Fontainebleau and I can assure you that the wolves pass under the southern highway without any problem through the tunnels, still indicates Gérard Tendron. They could very well have done the same in the Rhone Valley by taking during the night the bridges and even more the “fault bridges” intended for large animals.” A hypothesis confirmed by Loic Obled, the Deputy Director General of the French Office for Biodiversity (which took over from the National Hunting Office): “The progression of the wolf on the territory was carried out in a natural way It is a species agile enough to overcome all obstacles.” In fact, the animal is endowed with an exceptional faculty of adaptation. In Romania, a she-wolf crossed a city of 400,000 inhabitants to feed her young. So the case could end up in court. “By his statements, Eric Lebec only complicates a sensitive file, continues Loic Obled. We have also given him formal notice to provide proof of what he is saying. legal.”
The ideal, of course, would be to have a photo showing the wolf crossing the Rhone Valley. Is there not an “overpass” on the A7 motorway, located at the Col du Grand Bœuf, near Tain-l’Hermitage, intended to facilitate the passage of wildlife? “It was built in 2010 and had a camera that worked for 3 years,” says Philippe Chavaren, nature and landscape manager at Vinci Autoroutes. Result ? “No wolf was filmed there between 2010 and 2013. On the other hand, others were filmed 36 times in the Var on two other of our eco-bridges.”
Conclusion ? There is no certainty that a wolf crossed the Rhone Valley using a flyover, but the most likely hypothesis is that it crossed this obstacle by its own means. In any case, Eric Lebec does not provide proof that it was otherwise. Suffice to say that at this stage, the “bomb” announced on his video looks like a wet firecracker. If we dared, we would even write that there is a wolf…