A meeting takes place Wednesday in Toulouse around a new prefect specially appointed to devote himself to the protected species.
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“The danger of the bear is vastly overestimated because there have been many hunters seriously injured by wild boars this year”, estimates Patrick Leyrissou, vice-president and bear coordinator of Ferus, an association for the protection and conservation of bears, wolves and lynxes in France, Wednesday, December 8 on franceinfo, while a hunter killed a bear who had seriously injured him at the end of November.
While a meeting is being organized today in Toulouse with the new prefect in charge of the bear issue, Jean-Yves Chiaro, hunters are asking to be able to know the geolocation of bears in real time, so as not to be faced with their. But Patrick Leyrissou thinks that the device “would be used wrongly by people who would like to do malicious acts” towards these animals.
He recalls that “The practice of hunting involves risks, both for its practitioners and for third parties. The risk – as for mountain and high mountain practices – must be assumed and there must be training to manage it, to Reduce it to a minimum. We cannot spot all bears so we have to potentially consider that there may be some and adapt practices accordingly “.
Bear Advocate notes predation has dropped by “20 to 30%” This year “so it’s still going in the right direction “. What’s more, “We can see that the numbers of herds in the Pyrenees have been increasing for a few years so it works anyway”. To further protect the herds, he believes that “could well lower predations” if electrified protection parks were used “more systematically”.
“You are not regulating a population that is in critical danger of extinction.”
Patrick Leyrissou, vice-president and bear coordinator of Ferusto franceinfo
Faced with calls to regulate the bear population, Patrick Leyrissou recalls that “It’s one of the smallest populations in Europe so it would be totally illegal anyway “. According to him, there are about sixty bears in the Pyrenees, mostly in Ariège, then in Haute-Garonne and Béarn.