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They are adorable, yet hunted almost to extinction; timid-seeming, but vicious – even their name is an apparent oxymoron. In decades past, they teemed on the fields of eastern France. But soon, the world may have to bid farewell to the grand hamsters of Alsace.

“In theory, we know how to save them,” said Stéphane Giraud, director of Alsace Nature, an environmental non-profit group based in Strasbourg.

“They need space, the right kind of terrain and under-road passageways. The trick is to balance development and keep the species.”

Although grand hamsters have been on France's endangered list since 1993, that balance still seems beyond reach. The government has announced plans to build a new toll highway to reduce congestion around Strasbourg. The Grand Contournement Ouest – GCO, as it's called – will pass directly through the last grand hamster populations. Last year, a directive from Environment Minister Jean-Louis Borloo declared the highway an “urgent public utility,” thus overriding the protected status of the hamster.

Cricetus cricetus , known elsewhere as the European hamster, are giants of their kind, measuring 30 centimetres from head to tail. Alsace has the sole population in France and one of the last in Western Europe.

According to Mr. Giraud, in the 1960s, the white-pawed, black-bellied hamsters enjoyed a population density of 10 animals a hectare.

“Today, there are 0.2 per hectare. Biologists say a density of two [a] hectare is needed for the population to survive.”

The animals emerge from hibernation each year to devour cereals, stealing seeds to hide in their labyrinthine underground burrows. To protect crops, villages paid schoolchildren a few francs for every hamster they killed in the 1960s.

“Some towns wanted the children to bring in the heads, others wanted paws or tails [as proof of a kill],” said retired University of Strasbourg professor Bernard Canguihlem, who studied the animals. “So the children in different villages would trade parts with each other, to get paid two or three times.”

Mr. Canguihlem used the same method to stock his lab for hamster hibernation studies. He would pay children for live animals, transferring them to his cages in a village schoolyard, wearing steel-lined gloves to protect himself from the animal's teeth – a real danger, as his assistant lost part of his finger to an enraged hamster.

“Occasionally one would jump out, and everybody would chase it. It was like the Wild West,” he said.

The 1981 ban on this practice was, in Mt. Canguihlem's opinion, the beginning of the end for the grand hamster.

“They would trap between 300 and 400 animals for me every year in the villages of Innenheim and Blaesheim. And every year, there would be more. But when they could no longer be sold, the farmers had no reason not to kill them.”

The government-backed extermination was so successful that when the hamster was put on the protected species list in 1993, there were fewer than 2,000. There may be as few as 600 today, a decline Mr. Giraud blames on spreading urbanization and modern agriculture.

“Today, corn is grown throughout what's left of the hamster's range, and this doesn't grow until later in the season. There used to be grain, which would be available when they came out of hibernation in March,” he explained.

The GCO highway is another insult to this ongoing injury, slashing directly though the land most hospitable to the hamsters, separating the few remaining animals from each other and reducing their range.

While the grand hamsters have been known to win battles with dogs several times their size, they can't fight the French state alone. Alsace Nature has lodged a complaint with the European Commission, which could fine the French government millions of euros for failing to honour its obligations to the grand hamster. Mr. Giraud's group has also launched an appeal of the “public utility” directive with the Conseil d'Etat, France's administrative court of last resort.

And in the finest French tradition, if the law does not work, or moves too slowly, Mr. Giraud has hamster-loving protesters ready to camp out on the planned route to halt construction.

“Since they haven't started working on it, we always have hope,” he said.

Special to The Globe and Mail