The SNCF Réseau company, a subsidiary of the SNCF in charge of track maintenance, was sentenced on Tuesday August 22 to a fine of 450,000 euros by the Angers criminal court for complicity in environmental damage, announced the floor. According to the regional press, she is accused of having damaged protected species, such as the blackcap, the great tit or the winter wren, by pruning work.
SNCF Réseau is condemned for “complicity in unauthorized attack by legal person on the conservation of the natural habitat of a protected species” and “complicity in unauthorized attack by legal person on the conservation of non-domestic animal species-species protected, “said the public prosecutor of Angers, Eric Bouillard, in a press release.
The company Sefa Environnement, a company from Haute-Saône responsible for the pruning work, is, for its part, sentenced to a fine of 30,000 euros, including 15,000 suspended.
A “remarkable work of investigation”
According to the prosecutor’s press release, the facts in question, examined by the court on June 27, 2023, occurred in Ecouflant (Maine-et-Loire), a town on the outskirts of Angers, between April 15 and July 23. 2019. According to the regional press, the two companies are condemned for pruning work carried out along the tracks in the middle of the nesting period.
These companies are also ordered to “pay jointly and severally damages of up to 10,000 euros” to five associations which had instituted civil proceedings, including the League for the Protection of Birds (LPO) Anjou and France Nature Environnement (FNE) Anjou, says the press release.
This decision “is not however final, the parties benefiting from the possibility of raising an appeal within ten days”, recalls the prosecution, which salutes “the remarkable work of investigation” carried out “by the French Office of Biodiversity (OFB) and the Angers public prosecutor’s office”.