A hearing against scaring brown bears in the Pyrenees at the State Council on 24 May

Photo: Collectif Hope

There are scarcely 70 individuals living in the Pyrenees. Despite being classified as critically in danger of extinction by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and protected on an international, European, and national level, brown bears are harassed relentlessly in France, at the risk of causing miscarriages for the female bears who are already having so much trouble surviving and getting their young to survive.

Each year, they are subjected to scaring shots authorised by prefectures with the blessing of the Ministries for the Ecological Transition and of Agriculture. To move them away from herds and achieve social peace among farmers, authorities allow bears to be victims of sound-effect shots, causing them stress and the possible separation of the female bears from their young. All of this even though the French National Council for the Protection of Nature [Conseil national de la protection de la nature (CNPN)] has estimated that these violent measures against these animals are much less effective than ensuring effective and proportionate protection of herds…

Measures that we are attacking at the source

In 2022, we were successful in getting all of the prefectural decrees allowing the harassment of brown bears in Ariège cancelled. After this sizeable victory, we are rallying to get the Ministerial decree of 4 May 2023 aiming to allow the scaring of these individuals in the Pyrenees suspended and then cancelled. Because without this Ministerial decree, no prefect would be able to authorise these shots on a local level.

With the decree that we are attacking, the government has confirmed its desire to use drastic measures against bears, even though the viability of their population is not guaranteed, and it is this Ministry that insists on capturing female bears in Eastern Europe to transport them to France! From our side, we are reaffirming our opposition to this cynical policy that pretends to want to revive the population of these threatened animals in our country, to then pursue them with dispersal grenades for up to eight months of the year.

To stop the government from allowing prefectures to authorise bear scaring in our mountain ranges, we will face the Ministry at the State Council on Wednesday 24 May at 10:30am.

Translated from the French by Joely Justice