It’s bears vs. sheep in the Pyrenees
Predatory animals are driving shepherds and their flocks from French high meadows
TST.-GIRONS, France he big brown bear is rarely seen in the mountains, but there are hints of its looming presence: a paw-print in the mud, a sheep’s mangled remains, furtive video images captured by government cameras.
The nearly invisible bear haunts the shepherds who drive their flocks across the high Pyrenees, the sheep flecking the dark green slopes with patches of white and supplying France with savory cheeses and tender lamb.
Hidden by the omnipresent fog or glimpsed only from a distance, the predatory bear has driven some of these sheepmen from the high meadows and they vow never to return.
“I’ve seen the carcasses,” said Christian Marrot, a sheep-raiser who was helping lead a flock through the streets of St.-Giron. “Now, I’m keeping mine below.”
Bears, sheep and humans are a volatile mix in these mountains. The combination has set up a classic French clash between the know-itall state in Paris, guided by the stiff hand of the European Union, and one of France’s myriad microcultures.
The conflict is elemental: The French government is trying to restore the centuriesold brown bear population, which dwindled nearly to extinction by the 1990s, the victim of encroaching humanity and hunting.
The shepherds are not interested in the bear as “an element of the natural heritage in the Pyrenees,” as a government brochure puts it. They see their sheep being eaten, in sizable numbers.
If the bears are a hidden part of the landscape, their sheep prey are the opposite.
Every June, shepherds spend two days parading their flocks through area villages. In St.-Girons, citizens came to their windows, smiling, to watch 800 sheep stream through this gray provincial town. The main street became a sea of woolly white sheep, baahing and nuzzling their handlers to the delight of children watching open-mouthed from the sidewalk.
A shepherd yelled out “Ah-to!” to encourage the scrambling sheepdogs to keep order.
As the shepherds see it, the bears have pitted bureaucrats against peasants.
“They’re taking surveys in Paris about our life here in the Ariège,” grumbled Pierre Fort, 74, a sheep farmer tending his flock in the town’s streets, referring to the French department where most of the bears live. Each one of his animals had his initials stamped on its backside. “They didn’t ask us if we wanted the bears here,” said Fort, his black beret clamped down on his head. He lost 35 sheep to the bears last year. “Too much,” he said. “It’s become impossible.” This fall the government plans to introduce two more bears to the existing population of 43. “France has an obligation, under the European Union directives,” said Alain Reynes, who heads a pro-bear association that was a plaintiff in the case.
Despite the opposition, officials have been trucking in anesthetized bears from Slovenia for more than 20 years, releasing them in the mountains, then tracking them with great solicitude.
They issue lavish reports about the bears’ lifestyle, assign multiple wildlife agents to watch over them, film them nuzzling forest trees and give each a cuddly name, like Callisto or Cannellito or Caramellito.
The sheepmen grumble about that, too. In the old days, the bear was addressed simply and respectfully as “lo moussu,” or “the mister,” in local dialect.
The Slovenian bears have adapted to their new French surroundings as best they can. But the shepherds say these Central European animals don’t play by the same rules as the more civilized French bears of old and are more prone to eat their sheep. They are tired of mourning over the bloodied remains of animals that are like family members.
“These Slovenian bears are much more opportunistic,” said Robin Cazalé, a farmer who lost three sheep to the bears last month.
The numbers back the belief that the bears are becoming more of a menace.
Bear attacks on sheep increased 46 percent in 2017 compared with 2016. Some 464 sheep were killed or wounded by bears, the greatest number since the bear-import program began in 1996. Dozens of sheep, frightened by marauding bears, ran to their deaths off high cliffs last year, some 260 in all. “I’ve lost half my flock,” said Marrot, the sheep owner who no longer goes to the mountain.
Tempers are rising in the Pyrenees. In the last year there have been demonstrations, arrests and gunshots in the air. The tension is likely to increase before the two new bears are dropped into the area in September. While bear hunting has been forbidden since 1962, the shepherds are threatening to ignore the ban. A clandestine video of masked and hooded gunmen warning that bear hunting would begin again circulated widely, infuriating the local préfete, Paris’ top representative in the Ariège.