PARIS – The rooster crowing and the church bell ringing at dawn. The sound of a tractor and the smell of manure wafting from a nearby stable. The deafening song of cicadas or the discordant croaking of frogs. Ducks squawking, sheep bleating and braying donkeys
Perennial rural sounds and smells like these were protected by French law last week, when lawmakers passed a bill to preserve “the countryside’s sensory heritage” after a series of widespread neighborhood fights in rural France, many of them involving noisy animals.
In a nation still stuck to its agrarian roots and its terroir – a deep sense of place linked to the land – the disputes symbolized tensions between urban newcomers and the former inhabitants of the countryside, frictions that only grew with the coronavirus pandemic and a series of roadblocks attract new residents to the countryside.
“Life in the country means accepting some inconvenience,” said Joël Giraud, the French government’s junior minister in charge of rural life, said on Thursday. It would be illusory, he said, to idealize the countryside as a haven of perfect tranquility.
Perhaps the most prominent of these noisy animals is Maurice, a rooster in Saint-Pierre-d’Oléron, a town on an island on the west coast of France. Its owner was sued by neighbors – regular tourists in the area – because he screamed too loudly.
Politicians and thousands of petitioners ran in defense of the Gallic rooster, and a court ended up ruling in 2019 that Maurice, who died last summer at the age of six, was within his rights.
“Our rural territories are not just landscapes, they are also sounds, smells, activities and practices that are part of our heritage,” Giraud told lawmakers in the French Senate. “New inhabitants of the countryside are not always used to this.”
The project was approved by the National Assembly, the lower house of the French Parliament, last January. In a rare display of parliamentary and political unity, the Senate unanimously approved a seamless version of the bill on Thursday.
“The goal is to give elected officials a toolbox,” said Pierre-Antoine Levi, a center senator who helped draft the bill, arguing that mayors were being caught in the middle of an increasing number of neighborhood disputes.
To name just a few recent cases: in Dordogne, a region in southwest France, a court ordered a couple to drain their lake after neighbors complained about the endless frog croaking; in Alsace, in eastern France, a court ruled that a horse should be at least 15 meters from the neighboring property after complaining about stinking droppings and flocks of flies; in Le Beausset, a small village in the south of France, residents were shocked when tourists complained about the cicadas singing. (The mayor responded last year by installing a six-foot statue).
In one of the most tragic cases, more than 100,000 petitioners called for justice last year after Marcel, a rooster from Ardèche in southeastern France, was shot and beaten to death by a neighbor enraged by his singing. The man later received a suspended 5-month prison sentence.
The new law amends France’s environmental code to say that the “sounds and smells” of France’s natural spaces are an integral part of its legally defined “shared heritage”. And it urges local administrations to take an inventory of the “sensory heritage” in their area, to give newcomers a better idea of what to expect.
The law brings no specific penalty or creates a list of specifically protected sounds or smells, but Levi, who represents Tarn-et-Garonne, a predominantly rural area in southwest France, said it would give mayors more authority to smooth over disputes before that would end up in court and would give judges a firmer legal basis for resolving the cases that reached them.
“This law does not mean that farmers will be able to do what they want,” he said. “The idea is to create a code of good conduct.”
It is too late for Maurice. But his successor, Maurice II, can now scream with the full confidence of those with the law at his side. Corinne Fesseau, its owner, told France 2 television this week she was thrilled with the new law.
“The city has its noises,” she said. “The field too.”