The images are violent. A brown bear attacked a female bear and her cub in the Spanish region of Castile and Leon. The authorities are trying Tuesday, June 7 to find the two victims, separated by this fight filmed by an amateur videographer. “We know the bear is injured, but we don’t know anything else”told AFP a source from the Department of the Environment of this region of northern Spain.
Thanks to the video authors, Claudio Sordo Velasco and Carmen Ortega Fernández, who have been authorized to broadcast a @jcyl through the cuenta oficial @naturalezacylpodemos observe cómo tuvo lugar la pelea entre un oso macho y una hembra que protegía a su cria pic.twitter.com/vBW04kIaFl
— Naturaleza Castilla y Leon (@naturalezacyl) June 7, 2022
The male and female fought over a cliff, and both ended up falling from great heights, hitting rocks, with one rolling for a long time before coming to rest, according to the video of two hikers. Despite its larger size, the bear died in the fight, authorities said, and the injured female returned to pick up the cub for a possible reunion, which authorities are trying to confirm.
The incident happened in Peña de Santa Lucía, in the province of Palencia. As the organization Nature Castile and León explained on Twitter, at this time of year “It is common for mothers to defend their young against attacks by males seeking to bring them back into heat”.
“Like other animals, bears have a reproductive instinct. They look for female bears with their cubs to kill the cubs”told AFP the president of the Brown Bear Foundation, Guillermo Palomero. “The bear goes into heat two or three days later, and this infanticidal bear can mate with her and leave her genes”he added, calling these attacks “very violent”. The female, “located several weeks ago with two cubs, had recently lost one, presumably due to an attack by this male or another”clarified Nature Castile and León.
According to a statement from the regional government, “technical staff, veterinarians, environmental officers, conservationists and the Natural Heritage Foundation Bear Patrols” of the region, assisted by the Civil Guard, take part in the search. In Spain, some 330 brown bears live in the Cantabrian mountain range and another 70 in the Pyrenees, according to the Brown Bear Foundation.