France risks farmers’ ire by releasing bears into Pyrenees

FRANCE is to release two female bears into the Pyrenees, the first in a decade, placing the government on a collision course with farmers who complain that the animals pose a threat to livestock.

Sheep farmers have previously taken the law into their own hands, targeting bears with various traps, including one containing honey mixed with glass.

However, Nicolas Hulot, the French environment minister and a former wildlife television presenter, said the population could die out as only two lonesome males – father and son – were left in the area.

“I don’t want to be the minister who stood by while this line (of bears) died out,” Mr Hulot told Le Parisien.

Bears were re-introduced from Slovenia in the Nineties after hunters all but wiped out France’s native population of the creature.

The last time was in 2006, when five were freed near the Spanish border, but the lovelorn males, Canellito and Néré, are the only ones left in the western Pyrenees.

Another 37 have been counted in the central section of the mountain range along the Spanish border.

But conservationists say the two isolated males are unlikely to reach the group and would have to fight dominant males before being able to mate with the females.

A poll this week showed that 84 per cent of the French favour the bears, although they were blamed for the deaths of around 450 sheep who tumbled off cliffs while being chased by bears last summer.