Rare Frog Takes French Space Agency to Court: A Legal Leap for Wildlife

A so-called “biodiversity sanctuary” where protected species are deliberately destroyed? On its website and during free tourist tours at Kourou, the Guiana Space Centre (CSG) praises its virtuous multi-year management plans and collaborations with the scientific and associative community.

However, off-camera, the story is quite different. At the end of 2022, the Cayenne prosecutor’s office initiated a judicial investigation targeting the National Centre for Space Studies (Cnes), which manages the CSG, for the destruction of sensitive habitats and protected species during unauthorized construction activities.

The public institution will be heard in the Cayenne court on December 1st as part of a guilty plea hearing—a form of “conciliation” process between the parties.

Following an investigation with the local investigative media Guyaweb and Agence France Presse (AFP), Decatur Metro unveils the behind-the-scenes details of this case.

The construction activities under scrutiny took place from February to September 2022 and involved the Callisto project, spearheaded by Cnes along with the German and Japanese space agencies, aimed at developing reusable rockets. This “test launcher” would be located on the former Diamant launch pad, used by France for rocket launches in the 1970s.

Despite its degraded state, this savannah was home to multiple habitats and protected species, including a breeding site for the ocellated leptodactyl (Leptodactylus chaquensis), an extremely rare frog classified as endangered on the French red list of threatened species.

According to Cerato, the herpetological association of French Guiana, a pond located on the CSG site and discovered in early 2022, concentrated 13% of the known population of this animal, highlighting its “major importance for understanding the species and simply for its survival.” The association, which initiated the legal proceedings, has since become a civil party to the case.

The prosecutor suspects Cnes knew about the presence of the species before construction began on March 14, 2022. Judicial sources describe phone conversations about this between the General Directorate for Territories and the Sea (DGTM), responsible for the investigation, and the public institution, between March 8 and 10.

Cnes was then formally notified by email from the DGTM and Biotope, the naturalist study office tasked with fauna-flora inventories for this project.

In an email dated March 23, the instructing service, unaware that the construction had already begun, confirmed to Cnes that work “could not start in the current state,” due to the lack of a “protected species exemption” and also water law authorization.

Instead of halting these illegal activities and regularizing the situation—by proposing, for instance, avoidance and compensation measures as is customary in the case of a “protected species exemption”—the Cnes management decided to continue the earth-moving in the area.

“Any industrial halt would have a financial impact. Unless expressly requested, we will continue these works,” wrote Nathalie Fuentes, one of the project managers for Callisto based in Toulouse, to her teams in an email dated March 22 that we have seen.

After eight months of illegality, the construction ceased on September 13, 2022, following several inspections by the French Office for Biodiversity (OFB) and the DGTM, just as Cnes had received a draft administrative order from the prefecture, which was eventually published two months later.

“The Cnes environmental service tries to do its job as best as it can, and we note improvements, but it feels like they have to bow down to the management’s directives, which prioritize industrial and economic goals first,” observed Rémi Girault, a botanist specializing in savannahs, and former president of Guyane Nature Environnement.

The ecological stakes are indeed significant. Across the 650 km² it owns in French Guiana, Europe’s spaceport encompasses 23.8% of the existing savannahs in French Guiana, a biodiversity-rich ecosystem where 16% of the known flora of the territory is found on just 0.3% of its area.

“These are the spaces most threatened by coastal urbanization. Beyond the CSG, the unauthorized destruction of savannahs is frequently lamented, often based on poorly conducted inventories or ineffective compensation measures,” explains Rémi Girault.

Other elements in the case raise questions about Cnes’ good faith. As early as 2019, teams from the space center had cleared the area involved in the Callisto project under the guise of a waste cleanup operation, without declaring these works to the prefecture.

Internal exchanges we have access to suggest that, as one of the Cnes managers wrote, it was an operation aiming “not to be hindered by any protected species.” This could skew the inventories by Biotope, conducted a few months later.

The Callisto case is not the first instance of the space sector infringing on biodiversity conservation. In an opinion dated July 20, 2022, which we have obtained, the Regional Scientific Council for Natural Heritage of French Guiana (CSRPN) described the case as being “far from the first at the CSG site” and condemned a “form of contempt for environmental issues.”

In 2016, Cnes had already been ordered by state services for unauthorized works on the Ariane 6 launch pad. Moreover, the public institution will be judged on October 6 for a related infringement in the Callisto case concerning the development of a so-called PV2 photovoltaic park, covering an area of 4.7 hectares for a capacity of 5 MW.

Judicial sources claim that the plot in question had undergone advanced works to prepare archaeological excavations without waiting for the necessary authorizations, including the famous “protected species exemption.” A November 2021 inventory by Biotope identified twelve species with “strong to very strong” conservation concerns.

Like Callisto, this project carries significant economic weight. The park is funded by a France Relance grant of 5 million euros, which was contingent on one condition: the park had to be operational by the end of 2023. Was this enough to justify the premature start of the works? When asked, Cnes chose not to respond to our questions and stated only that it would “defer to the court’s decision.”

Beyond the contempt Cnes shows for environmental law, these cases reveal that, despite potentially criminal activities reported by their teams, the upper echelons of the state in French Guiana have shown great leniency towards the space sector.

Once the construction was halted following the OFB investigation, email exchanges between the general secretariat of the prefecture and the DGTM management, which we have seen, show that the state did everything to expedite the resumption of work and support Cnes through this crisis, given the substantial sums at stake.

“Please try to restrain the OFB, as this is a project of major regional interest,” requested Mathieu Gatineau, former general secretary of the prefecture, in an email dated October 6, 2022, addressed to the DGTM, referring to the investigation on PV2.

In the same exchange, Ivan Martin, director of the DGTM, reassured his correspondent about the Callisto case by explaining that his teams would not “inspect” the Diamant site following the order, to avoid any “administrative sanction.”

“The state is putting 9 billion on the table for the development of space. […] We do not weigh much […] It may not be regulatory, but we need to find a way to support the works,” Ivan Martin already summarized in an email dated September 22, 2022, a few days after the construction was halted.

These pressures have not prevented Cnes from ending up in court. However, its legal journey appears unique in several respects. In the Callisto case, Cnes was initially offered by the prosecutor’s office a public interest judicial agreement. This agreement included a fine of 10,000 euros, 20,000 euros in damages, and repair measures over three years. As a legal entity, Cnes could have faced a fine of up to 750,000 euros.

The sum proposed by the prosecutor’s office seems all the more trivial given the recommendations of the independent expert appointed by the court, who estimated the ecological damage at 9.7 million euros and the years of restoration needed between 23 and 57 years.

This first agreement, deemed too favorable to Cnes, was overturned by the Cayenne court in July 2024. The legal future of Cnes now hangs in the balance at the hearing on December 1st, where the civil party hopes to have the facts of the Callisto case reclassified as an ecocide offense and taken to criminal court.

Contacted at the end of our investigation, neither Cnes, nor the state services, nor Mr. Gatineau, now posted at the prefecture of Bouches-du-Rhône, nor the former substitute prosecutor who originated the public interest judicial agreement, responded. The prosecutor’s office chose not to speak before October 6 to ensure the “serenity of the debates.”

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