Tensions with farmers: the headquarters of the Biodiversity Office tagged and burned in Aude

The French Biodiversity Office has once again been targeted. Its departmental headquarters in Aude was degraded this Wednesday in Trèbes, near Carcassonne, in a context of tension with farmers, we learned from a source close to the investigation. The entrance to the OFB representation in Aude was tagged and its gate set on fire, noted an AFP photographer. The police opened an investigation.

“From the dealers” was painted in green paint on a low wall, next to the burnt gate, in reference to comments made by an OFB agent on France Inter. He declared that if farmers “no longer want to see us on their farms. It’s the same as if the dealers asked the police to no longer come to the cities. »

Relations have worsened with the rural world since the crisis which shook the profession last year, with some farmers complaining about controls considered intimidating, and since the Prime Minister’s statements during his general policy speech. François Bayrou had described certain inspections by OFB agents as “humiliation” and “mistake”, “a weapon in the belt in a farm already put on edge by the crisis”.

The OFB also targeted in Hérault

The OFB unions denounce “repeated attacks, orchestrated by a large majority of agricultural unions”, having “received more than sympathetic government attention”.

On January 20, the Minister of Ecological Transition Agnès Pannier-Runacher defended the OFB, the day after damage to OFB premises in Hérault. “The OFB plays an essential role in our territories, by ensuring the management and drinking water, by fighting against pollution, by guaranteeing the safety of hunting,” she wrote on X.

“I said it to the senators and I say it again here: I do not accept that we put targets behind the backs of public agents, as was done again this weekend in a violent manner in the Hérault. »