In one of the previous articles ( here ), was mentioned about the effort to re-introduce brown bears in Pirinei mountains, northern Spain. There have been a number of bears captured (mostly from Slovenia) and released in several areas of the mountains, enough to call it a symbolical re-population of the vast area with one of Europe’s top predators, but not enough to secure a viable and self-sustaining population.
Travelling in one of the areas, we had the chance to enjoy authentic mountain scenery, and also learn from locals what is their view on the topic, after reading in press few claims of bear attack over the livestock grazing freely in an area, including a horse! Pretty unheard for a brown bear to attack such big animals, known that they are shy animals, and most of them live on a complete vegetarian diet, unless opportunistically an occasion arises to find a dead animal on their way!
What we were told by locals is that the release of bears was inappropriate, that the central government agreed to an European funded project to re-populate the area with brown bears, but in fact some bears being relocated were coming from private hunting reserves, where they were used to eating livestock…that could have explained indeed the recent attacks in the areas. Unfortunately this bad experience turned completely the local populations against bears in general, which otherwise are peaceful animals, and we are personally afraid that the whole project is now compromised, as well as in the near future, as skeptics will always use this bad experience to fight off any new attempts of the bear introduction. Also all local bears already released, bad or good ones, they are under risk of being shot, poisoned and trapped, by local hunters, thinking they will do what is just, even if illegal!
Pretty sad news, after an initial successful re-integration when few female brown bears already had small cubs, sign that they find enough food in the area and they would accommodate well! A recent amateur video shows a brown bear caught on camera in the area (however a very bad practice to try to film animals this way): video here