People will more readily speak to the police on horseback and bike

Festival, a Norman cob that picks up the glass in Trouville-sur-Mer (Calvados), Pola, a Percheron which leads children to kindergarten of Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives (Calvados), horses that are of the logging in the forest of Rambouillet, or saddle horses and their municipal police criss-crossing the streets of Caen. Today, 100 communes in France use the services of horses for municipal tasks. Quadrille, an ardennais, picks up the green waste and, summer, watering the flowers of Lampertheim (Bas-Rhin). Wimille (Pas-de-Calais) is same question to clean up the beach with the help of a boulonnais.

"We are at the beginning of a movement, but all experiences are satisfactory," notes Dominique Léger, President of the Centre for the promotion of the auxois horse. "The Congress, in October, territorial horses, organized since 2001 by Trouville, a pioneer city in the use of the services of municipal horses, a more successful", continues this specialist. This meeting has, indeed, identified in the country operational projects or study 100.

The relational also

Their motivation is either ecological or relational as nature Jean-Louis Touzé, Deputy Mayor of Caen admits: "It is the previous municipality of Brigitte Lebreton, which had implemented this service of mounted police." We have not done so, but we maintain because it is a strong social link with the population. People will more readily speak to the police on horseback and bike. "All mayors who made use of horse traction for tasks requiring frequent stops part of this approach in their sustainable development policy. The organizers of the Salon of the horse in Paris, of Versailles, from tomorrow, a horse can pick up 150 tonnes of glass used per year, but also leaves dead or cardboard, and other waste for an investment of 9.400 euros, against 22.800 euros for a polluting truck and 13.700 euros for a conventional truck. "We had to buy a municipal vehicle." The budget to buy a horse and equipment, trailer, harness by a SADDLER in our region, was estimated at 10,000 euros. "That a vehicle would have been at least twice, especially if it had invested in an electric truck to be comparable to the carbon footprint", says Annick Poinsignon, Deputy Mayor of Lampertheim: "this ardennais we is lent by the national stud of Alsace who advised us to carry out the project."

The stud farm, indeed, created a consultancy in engineering through which they fly the establishment of the equine municipal services in the communes that make the application. "We are currently feasibility studies which are tools to help in the decision taking into account all technical, economic and regulatory factors," says Stéphane de Veyrac, HN Council engineering Director. The study provides municipalities different patterns depending on whether they decide to acquire and manage the animal, or delegate this service to a professional. Thus to Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives, the Town Hall decided in 1993 to buy Urania to replace the cantonnier departing retired. Today, it is replaced by Pola and percheronnes both became the mascots of this small seaside town where insists on the eclecticism of the tasks of this municipal employee four-legged.