The Hunting Charge

Written in the form of a deliberately polemical essay, this text challenges the very concept of the 'hunting permit' and proposes to replace it with that of the 'hunting charge', effecting a conceptual revolution with profound legal implications regarding the status of game and the rights and duties of hunters. The author denounces the dominant mentality of hunters who, armed with their paid permit, believe themselves authorised to harvest without limits or responsibilities, ignoring the biological cycles of game, the issues of species balance, and the fragility of the environment, and assimilating hunting to a simple 'purchased right' rather than a responsibility towards the collective natural heritage. The central argument rests on the inalienable character of game as national property — the collective ownership of the nation — which implies legally that no one can be the 'holder' of a private hunting right, but only the beneficiary of a charge accompanied by obligations of management, conservation, and restoration of wildlife. The author concludes that hunting, to be a civic act consistent with law and environmental ethics, must cease to be perceived as a right to kill and become a stewardship mission of the national faunal heritage, requiring reform of Moroccan hunting law to align it with contemporary environmental protection and biodiversity requirements.