French farmers ‘shoot at’ officials in row over bears

Wildlife agents investigating attacks on livestock by the reintroduced predators are greeted with hail of bullets

FARMERS in France’s Pyrenees mountains have been accused of firing “50 shots” at state experts who came to assess how many sheep had been killed by bears in the region. Prosecutors in the county of Ariège have launched a judicial investigation into “violence with weapons” after a group of “30 aggressive people” unleashed a hail of bullets in the vicinity of four experts from the national hunting and wildlife office, ONCFS.

The agents had come to make checks on Aug 25 after farmers reported bear attacks on their livestock. ONCFS agents have the delicate role of both validating compensation for farmers who lose livestock and sanctioning those who harm the strictly protected bears. No one was hurt but the shots were “manifestly to intimidate them”, said Karline Bouisset, the local prosecutor, who denounced a “general climate of hostility”. The officials’ car tyres were also slashed.

Nicolas Hulot, the environment minister, swiftly condemned the incident.

Tensions have escalated in the mountain range that straddles the Frenchspanish border since July, when more than 200 sheep died after plunging off a cliff in the Pyrenees while being chased by a bear. The sheep belonged to a farmer in the Couflens area on the French side of the border.

Owners are compensated for each animal killed under a deal between the government and farmers since brown bears from Slovenia were introduced in the late 1990s.

But local sheep farmers complain that the bears have killed 400 livestock in the past month.

“Given the situation, it is clear that the bear and pastoralism are incompatible,” warned three farmers’ unions.

They received the support of a group of local elected representatives, who requested that the French state remove the bear population, estimated at 39.

Alain Servat, mayor of Uvuas, where most of the sheep deaths have occurred, has even unilaterally passed a decree banning bears from “wandering” into the mountainous area around his village. “There will one day be a problem with man – a tourist or inhabitant,” he told La Dépêche du Midi.

Pays de l’ours-adet, a pro-bear association, said bears accounted for only a tiny part of sheep losses in the Pyrenees. “The amount of sheep killed [by bears], without playing down the tragedy for rearers, is only a very small part of deaths due to falls, storms, parasites or other animals like stray dogs or wild boar,” said Alain Reynes, its president. “The bear is just a scapegoat.”

Bruno Besche-commenge, spokesman for the anti-bear Association for the Sustainable Development of the Identity of the Pyrenees, replied: “I’d rather shoot a bear than see a sheep farmer shoot himself in his barn out of despair.”