Several hundred people demonstrated Thursday, November 25 in Rimont, Ariège, to defend hunting "
everywhere
", while pro-bears want to ban it in areas where this plantigrade lives, after a bear was killed by a hunter she had injured.
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“
For now, the mountain is calm. If by any chance hunting were to be banned, or even heavily regulated, the mountain would be agitated,
”declared Jean-Luc Fernandez, president of the Ariege Hunting Federation in front of the demonstrators, some of them in fatigues and with neon vests. “
No one will accept it. I will not accept the slightest constraint on the practice of hunting. We must be able to hunt everywhere,
”he added to the mostly male demonstrators. “
Man today owes his survival only to his condition as a hunter. If it had been a hiker, we would be facing a coffin,
”said for his part the PS president of the Ariège Departmental Council, Christine Téqui.
The cohabitation between the bear and the Man considered "impossible"
The speakers are applauded.
The applause intensifies when it is the turn of Laetitia, the volunteer firefighter who provided first aid to the hunter injured by the bear on Saturday, November 20.
As of Sunday, Jean-Luc Fernandez had judged "
impossible
" the cohabitation between the bear and the human being.
For Alain Servat, the president of the Pastoral Federation of Ariège (FPA), protective measures against possible bear attacks are no longer sufficient: “
Among the thirty summer pastures that have suffered bear attacks, 24 applied at least two of these measures,
”he said.
A protected species, the Pyrenean brown bear has recently been targeted.
The bear shot on November 20 by a hunter, during a wild boar hunt, is the fourth specimen to be killed by humans in the space of a year and a half.
For the pro-bear association Pays de l'ours-Adet, this “
event in no way calls into question the presence of the bear
” in the Pyrenees.
Experts believe that the bear attacked the hunter because the latter found himself between her and her two cubs.
Read alsoDo traditional bird hunts threaten biodiversity?
On the other hand, pro-bears launched a petition to demand "
the end of the beatings in the middle of the bear zone
" which had exceeded 46,000 signatures on Thursday afternoon.