PARIS – The crow of a rooster and the ringing of a church bell at dawn. The rumble of a tractor and the smell of manure from a stable nearby. The deafening song of cicadas or the indiscriminate croaking of frogs. Quack ducks, sheep chops and donkeys brack.
Perennial rural sounds and smells like these were protected by French law last week when lawmakers passed a bill to ‘preserve’ the ‘sensory heritage of the countryside’, following a series of widely publicized neighborhoods in rural France, many of whom were involved in noisy animals.
In a nation still attached to its agrarian roots and to its terror – a deep sense of place attached to the land – the disputes symbolized the tension between urban newcomers and longtime residents, frictions that only grew as the coronavirus pandemic and a series of closures are attracting new residents to the countryside.
“Life in the countryside means you have to accept some nuisance,” Joël Giraud, the junior minister of the French government in charge of rural life, said on Thursday. It would be illusory, he said, to idealize the countryside as a picturesque retreat of tranquility.
Perhaps the most important of these noisy animals was Maurice, a rooster in Saint-Pierre-d’Oléron, a town on an island off the west coast of France. Its owner has been sued by neighbors – regular holidaymakers in the area – for shouting too loudly.
Politicians and thousands of petitioners rushed to the Gallic cock’s defense, and a court finally ruled in 2019 that Maurice, who died last summer at the age of six, was well within his rights.
“Our rural areas are not only landscapes, it is also sounds, smells, activities and practices that are part of our heritage,” said Mr. Giraud told lawmakers in the French Senate. “Newcomers are not always used to it.”
The bill was passed by the National Assembly, the French lower house of France, last January. In a rare display of parliamentary and political unity, the Senate on Thursday unanimously adopted an unchanged version of the bill.
“The goal is to give elected officials a toolbox,” said Pierre-Antoine Levi, a centric senator who helped draft the bill, arguing that mayors are being caught amid increasing numbers of neighborhood disputes.
To name but a few recent cases: in the Dordogne, a region in the south-west of France, a court ordered a couple to drain their dam after neighbors complained about incessant frog-croaking; in Alsace, in the east of France, a court ruled that a horse should stay at least 50 feet from the neighboring property after grumbling about stinking dung and flies; in Le Beausset, a small town in the south of France, residents were shocked when tourists complained about the singing of kikades. (The mayor responded last year by installing a one-foot-one statue.)
In one of the more tragic cases, more than 100,000 petitioners complained of justice last year after Marcel, a rooster in Ardèche, in the southeast of France, was furiously shot and beaten to death by a neighbor. The man later imposed a five-month prison sentence.
The new law adapts 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’. It calls on local authorities to compile an inventory of the “sensory heritage” in their area to make newcomers better aware of what to expect.
The law does not contain any specific fines or creates a list of protected sounds or smells, but Mr. Levi, who represents Tarn-et-Garonne, a rural area in southwestern France, said it would give mayors more authority to make it smoother. about disputes before they ended up in court and would give judges a firmer legal basis to settle the cases they reached.
“This law does not mean that farmers will be able to do what they want,” he said. “The idea is to draw up a code of conduct.”
It’s too late for Maurice. But his successor, Maurice II, can now crow with the full throat confidence of someone who has the law on their side. Corinne Fesseau, its owner, TV 2 told France 2 this week that she is delighted with the new law.
“The city has its sounds,” she said. “So does the countryside.”