When SNCF Réseau, owner and manager of the rail network, informed local residents in the spring of 2019 of the clearing and pruning work on the Angers-Le Mans line, its executives were far from imagining that they were at great risk. “This operation consists in controlling the vegetation, in order to avoid the fall of trees and branches on the railway. This is to guarantee the safety and regularity of traffic and to protect the railway installations, “explained the message broadcast by the company. Who added: “ This work generates noise related to the operation of the machines”. The noise did not elicit a complaint.
But the pruning work carried out in Écouflant (Maine-et-Loire) along the tracks took place in the middle of the nesting period for protected species. This “attack on the conservation of the natural habitat of a protected species” is now worth SNCF Réseau being fined 450,000 euros while the company in charge of the works is fined 30,000 euros, of which 15,000 suspended.
The two companies are also ordered to “pay jointly and severally damages of up to 10,000 euros” to five civil party associations, including the League for the Protection of Birds (LPO) Anjou and France Nature Environnement (FNE) Anjou. “We had never before had a case of attack on protected species in the context of destruction linked to linear infrastructures such as railways, roads, power lines”, notes the lawyer from France nature environment. The two companies have ten days to appeal.
