2017-07-23 17:19:32
French farmers hit out at reintroduction programme of brown bears in Pyrenees after incident on Spanish border
More than 200 sheep have plunged to their deaths in the Pyrenees while apparently trying to escape a brown bear. The bears have been reintroduced to the mountain region over the past three decades after being wiped out by hunters.
The sheep, which belonged to a farmer in Couflens, south-west France, are thought to have taken fright when the bear appeared in the area last Sunday.
After the predator attacked one of the sheep, 209 others in the flock panicked and hurled themselves off a 200 metre-high cliff on the border between France and Spain. The bodies of 169 sheep were found the next day at the foot of the cliff in the Spanish village of Lladorre. The other dead animals were found in France.
The Spanish news agency Europa Press said bear fur had been found on one of the dead sheep and would be analysed to try to establish exactly what had happened.
Although the French government will compensate the farmer for his loss, the incident has provoked an angry response from the local branch of the French farmers federation.
Pastoralism which protects biodiversity and keeps the mountains alive is not compatible with the reintroduction of large predators, said the Conf d ration Paysanne de l Ari ge.
The last female brown bear native to the Pyrenees was shot dead by hunters in 2004. The French government has been engaged in a repopulation programme since the early 1990s, using bears from Slovenia. There are now thought to be about 30 brown bears in the region.
More than 130 sheep died in a similar, bear-related incident in the French Pyrenees last year.
Farmers on both sides of the border blame the bears for attacks on their livestock and the predators are sometimes killed. In September last year, the corpse of a brown bear a protected species in Spain was found with a gunshot wound to the chest in the northern regions of Asturias.
Publi le 20/07/2016 11:06
Ours : les leveurs indemnis s apr s la mort de 132 brebis
Environnement
Suite au d rochement d un troupeau de brebis qui a eu lieu sur une estive en vall e de Luz Saint- Sauveur le 2 juillet 2016, une r union exceptionnelle de la Commission d Indemnisation des D g ts d Ours du Parc national des Pyr n es s est tenue mardi Tarbes.
Si la responsabilit de l ours n est pas clairement av r e, la commission a d cid d indemniser la totalit des d g ts li s ce d rochement au b n fice du doute puisque l ours tait pr sent sur l estive au moment des faits. Quatre leveurs seront ainsi indemnis s pour les 132 brebis qui sont mortes lors de ce d rochement pour un montant de 31 492,00 .
La commission s est galement prononc e favorablement pour d clencher la proc dure li e un gros d g t pour un des leveurs qui a perdu pr s de 40% de son troupeau (125 brebis). Elle demande au service du parc national avec l appui de la chambre d agriculture des Hautes-Pyr n es, d estimer les pertes conomiques compl mentaires subies par cet leveur. L valuation du pr judice sera pr sent e
lors de la prochaine r union de la commission qui statuera sur une possible indemnisation compl mentaire.
ANDY BARREJOT
Protected brown bear found shot dead in northern Spain
12 September 2016
15:13 CEST+02:00
Spanish police opened an investigation on Monday after tourists discovered the body of a brown bear, a protected species in Spain, with a single gunshot wound to the chest.
Tourists came across the corpse of the male bear - weighing about 105 kilos (230 pounds) - on Friday near the entrance to the Muniellos Nature Reserve in the northern region of Asturias, a local police spokesman said.
There are some 280 brown bears in Spain, mainly in forest-rich Asturias and the Pyrenees mountains on the French border, according to conservation group Fundacion Oso Pardo ("Brown Bear Foundation").
The group's president, Guillermo Palomero, said the shooting of the bear was "very serious" and "very worrying" since it happened in the "heart of a protected area".
"There is no reason that justifies shooting and killing a bear," he told AFP.
Reintroduced in parts of western Europe - in the east they never died out - brown bears have created antagonism among locals in recent years with attacks on livestock.
Male bears weigh as much as 350 kilos (770 pounds) and females 200 kilos, and they can easily outrun a human. Rearing up, they stand up seven feet (two metres) tall.
They are omnivores, eating berries and nuts as well as small and large animals - including sheep and calves.
The World Wildlife Fund says the bears play an important role in keeping other animal populations in check and also in "seed dispersal" from their droppings.