French woman to pay €30,000 in compensation for beating lynx to death
Woman hit lynx as it entered her chicken coop
The woman struck the lynx on the head (photo for illustrative purposes)
Petr Salinger/Shutterstock
A woman has been ordered to pay over €30,000 to animal welfare associations after she was convicted of beating a lynx to death in Alsace.
The 62-year-old hit the lynx on the head after it entered her chicken coop and took hold of one of her chickens according to Le Figaro.
She then called local police after which an officer from the French Office of Biodiversity took the lynx to a vet, where it died from its injuries.
Lynx are a protected species in France, where only around 150 adults remain. Around 10 are thought to live in the Vosges mountains, near to where the woman lived, according to the Centre Athénas wildlife protection centre, which works to protect the species.
The woman told Strasbourg’s judicial court that she had mistaken the lynx for a domestic cat.
In court on Wednesday, May 20, the woman was found guilty of the illegal killing of a non-domestic species. She received a three-month suspended sentence and was ordered to pay €25,000 in compensation for “environmental harm” and €2,000 in compensation for "moral harm" to wildlife hospital, the Athénas centre. She must also pay a total of €3,300 to five other animal protection organisations that joined the lawsuit as plaintiffs.
Under France’s environmental code, killing a protected species is punishable by up to three years in prison and a fine of up to €150,000.
“As a civil party representing environmental protection associations, what's interesting is that we received fairly substantial compensation for ecological and moral damages,” François Zind, the lawyer representing the animal associations, told France 3.
“This will perhaps cover at least the cost of reintroducing another lynx to try to offset this outright loss of a lynx in this part of northern Alsace, where this animal is endangered and facing extinction.”
The vast majority (around 85%) of France’s lynx population is located in the Jura mountains, with smaller populations in the Vosges mountains close to where the incident happened in Niederbronn-les-Bains in October 2024.
The main threats to lynx are from road collisions and poaching.
