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CRIME

French tycoon fined €150k for harming tortoises

Corsican construction tycoon Patrick Rocca was fined €150,000 on Tuesday for harming protected tortoises on a building site even after officials told him to stop.

French tycoon fined €150k for harming tortoises
The Hermann's tortoise is the only species native to France. Photo by Sylvain THOMAS / AFP

Six dead specimens of a species known as Hermann’s tortoise and another “fatally wounded” animal were found when officers from France’s biodiversity agency inspected the worksite in December 2019.

Around 3.5 hectares of the habitat just outside the Mediterranean island’s capital Ajaccio were disturbed and 2.8 hectares destroyed, the inspectors found, calling for the work to be halted.

But Rocca’s Fortimmo company – one of the largest employers on the French Mediterranean island, with around 1,000 local workers – continued construction, with more dead tortoises found a few days later.

His conviction for mutilation and unauthorised destruction of a protected animal species and their habitat follows a court ruling against Fortimmo, which had to pay a €500,000 fine, and a total of €530,000 in damages.

Rocca’s lawyer Philippe Gatti called the punishments “excessive”.

Corsica is one of the last places where Hermann’s tortoises – the only species native to France – still live in the wild.

They are protected by France and the European Union as well as internationally.

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ENVIRONMENT

Homes evacuated as floods hit village in French Alps

More than 50 people had to be evacuated from their homes in a village in the French Alps as violent storms struck the south-east of the country.

Homes evacuated as floods hit village in French Alps

Less than four years after storm Alex struck the Boréon area of the Alpes-Maritimes département in September 2020, leading to 10 deaths, it was once again hit by severe weather, as the storms combined with high-altitude snow melt caused the Vésubie river to burst its banks.

The 1,400-population village of Saint-Martin-Vésubie, which was cut off from the rest of the country by the devastating 2020 storm, was again affected by severe weather.

Thierry Ingigliardi, the village’s deputy mayor in charge said: “Everything is being destroyed, we’re suffering the loss of roads yet again.” 

As a precaution, 52 people, including four children, were evacuated to a community hall.

But there was some confusion over the scale of damage caused by the flooding, after current Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin posted a message on X, formerly Twitter, saying that bridges had been washed away in the flooding. 

“None of the bridges are threatened, two fords have been washed away,” Gaël Nofri, deputy mayor of Nice, clarified on the social network.

But at least two bridges have been damaged, leaving around 20 homes cut off, while two other structures are still ‘under surveillance’, as the local council reported earlier. The latter also deplored “temporary infrastructures that are not holding”.

Hugues Moutouh, prefect of the Alpes-Maritimes region, told BFMTV: “Everyone is annoyed (…) It’s been going on for months now, we’re using temporary structures.”

Moutouh says he did not want “to come here again to see how powerless we are” when seasonal storms known as épisodes méditerranéens return in autumn. 

The storms in the Alps led to ‘once-in-a-century’ flooding in the Vaud canton of Switzlerand. Around one month’s rain fall fell in just an hour and caused major flooding in the town of Morges, which stands on the banks of Lake Geneva.

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