The state is preparing new bear scaring orders

April 17, 2023

Agriculture Minister Marc Fesneau, visiting Ariège, said on Monday that state services would prepare new texts authorizing bear scaring measures in the event of a plantigrade attack on herds. .

Since the reintroduction of the bear in the Pyrenees during the 1990s, sheep breeders have complained of predation. The French Office for Biodiversity (OFB) for its part counted 331 bear attacks on livestock in this mountain range in 2022, compared to 333 the previous year.

The prefectural decrees, legalizing the scaring and desired by the breeders, were overturned by the administrative justice, the bear being a protected species.

“I regret it because it is one of the ways to preserve the herds, without calling into question the bear. We need to rework legally, so as not to spend our time in court”, declared the minister in Foix, following meetings with actors from the rural world.

The pro-bear associations had taken legal action to have texts annulled “on an experimental basis” the prefects to grant exemptions for “simple scaring using sound, olfactory and light means” of plantigrades, but also ” reinforced scaring using non-lethal shots” (double detonation cartridges or rubber bullets).

The minister began his trip to Ariège with a visit to the sheepfold of Jean-Pierre Mirouze, who lost 260 ewes in 2019 during a rock fall, attributed to a bear.

“We can never sufficiently measure the distress of people who find themselves confronted with predation (…) There is a despair which arises from predation which must be understood, which must be heard, it is not a question mainly of compensation,” said Mr. Fesneau.

Philippe Lacube, president of the Chamber of Agriculture and anti-bear figure, was delighted that the minister went to “meet the real life of the territories”. He estimated that nothing has happened since a meeting between elected officials from Ariège with the ministers of Agriculture and Ecological Transition, in October in Paris. “The file hibernated for six months. We can’t go on like this,” he quipped.

In 2022, the OFB recorded 76 bears in the Pyrenees, an increase compared to 2021 (74) and 2020 (64).

In 2020, three were killed by humans in the Pyrenees and animal defenders are calling for their replacement, with new bear releases, as there were in the 1990s. The last release dates back to 2018 .

For the Pays de l’ours association, favorable to the presence of the plantigrade, “the bear population in the Pyrenees is still not viable”.

The PS president of the Ariège Departmental Council, Christine Téqui, and Mr. Lacube also asked Mr. Fesneau on Tuesday that the notion of self-defense against a wild beast be enshrined in law, so that there is no not be prosecuted for the destruction of a protected species if a man kills a bear after being attacked, as happened to a hunter at the end of 2021.