The number of animals attacked by bears in the Pyrenees fell in 2021, according to official figures given on Wednesday during the first meeting of the new “prefect bear” with supporters and opponents of the presence of the plantigrade.
State funding for herd protection measures or the strengthening of teams intervening at night to scare off potentially dangerous bears "certainly contribute to the decrease" of attacks, according to a press release issued by the prefecture after this closed meeting. of the Pastoralism and Bear group.
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According to participants at the meeting, the authorities presented a roadmap for 2022 including an increase in the "bear budget" beyond nine million euros.
A hunter seriously injured on November 20
A few days after a wild boar hunt in the town of Seix (Ariège), where a hunter was seriously injured on November 20 by a bear he then killed, the prefecture announced the appointment of Jean-Yves Chiaro as delegated prefect "In charge of subjects relating to bears in the Pyrenees mountains".
At the end of Wednesday's meeting, François Thibault, who represented the Confédération paysanne, described this appointment as "a good thing because it is a sign that the issue is growing in importance and that the State is concerned. ".
Another representative of the breeders, Yann de Kérimel (Rural Coordination), disputed the figures of the prefecture for which, in 2021, the number of animals attacked is "lower than all annual reports since 2017".
For him, "we can believe that it is decreasing because we have overcounted those of previous years".
"We must continue to put protections"
Among the pro bears, Alain Marek, Ariège delegate of Aspas (Association for the protection of wild animals), deemed sufficient the current annual increase of 10% in the number of bears, not wishing for new introductions likely to harm the necessary “dialogue”, in particular with the breeders.
For Patrick Leyrissoux, from Ferus, another pro-bear association, "we must continue to put in protections" in order to further limit attacks.
On the other hand, for Yann de Kérimel, these protections harm the ewes, which are also “wild animals” and are not intended to be grouped together every evening to avoid attacks from these “non-Pyrenean” bears who “unfortunately have the 'habit of approaching man and herds'.
In the 1990s, France initiated a program to reintroduce plantigrades from Slovenia when the bear population in the Pyrenees was threatened with extinction.
