Director accused of causing loss of 500 flamingo eggs

A DIRECTOR famous for wildlife films is facing legal action after an aircraft scouting locations terrified France’s only colony of wild flamingos, causing hundreds of birds to abandon their eggs.

Nicolas Vanier, the filmmaker, said he was horrified that the pilot disregarded instructions to avoid the protected nesting areas in the Camargue, a wetlands region in southern France.

France Nature Environnement, a conservation group, has lodged a legal complaint for intentional disturbance of a protected species with public prosecutors. They will decide whether to press charges against the company that organised the flights or Mr Vanier or the production company, Radar Films.

Mr Vanier said he did not believe he could be “held responsible”. Radar Films declined to comment.

Olivier Gourbinot of France Nature Environnement said: “There are only 4,500 pairs of flamingos in France and 500 were disturbed. Each pair lays only one egg and an estimated 500 eggs were abandoned, so at least 11 per cent of the eggs from the country’s only flamingo colony were destroyed.”

Mr Vanier said: “I was outraged. The pilot had been given a flight plan that specifically indicated the areas to avoid.”

Mr Vanier, 56, best known for films such as Wolf and The Last Trapper, is making a film called Give Me Wings about a scientist’s passion for wild geese. On Monday he said he had halted aerial filming in France and is completing the project in Norway.

He said he wishes to “repair whatever can be repaired” and has proposed to French environmental groups that he “sponsor” the flamingos and become a “spokesman for the problems suffered by migratory birds”.