It is a confrontation that revives the debates on the cohabitation between man and bear in the mountains. Saturday, November 20, a hunter killed a bear during a hunting party in Seix (Ariège). The 78-year-old man was severely bitten by the animal before killing it, using his shotgun. Wounded in the legs and taken to hospital, he is now out of danger. Franceinfo takes stock of the first elements of the case.
The group of hunters were stalking the wild boar
The facts took place in a forest of Seix, a rural commune located 60 km west of Foix, in a very steep area at 1,200 m altitude. A group of hunters was tracking wild boar in the area known as “Couserans” when one of them was attacked by a bear accompanied by her two cubs, reports France 3 Occitanie. The septuagenarian was bitten in the legs and said to have killed the bear by shooting twice with his shotgun.
“He is seriously injured, his legs are torn, his fibula is broken and the femoral artery is affected”, detailed Jean-Luc Fernandez, president of the Ariège hunting federation, to France 3 Occitanie. According to the first testimonies, the bear dragged the hunter for several meters before he succeeded in killing him. He was then rescued by the other hunters and was quickly evacuated to the hospital in Foix. “His vital prognosis is not engaged”, said Léa Filippi, deputy public prosecutor of Foix.
The presence of bears had been reported
As the Pays de l’ours-Adet association reported on Facebook, a bear named “Caramelles” and her two cubs had been spotted by a camera in Seix on October 11. Nothing proves for the moment that it is about the female killed this weekend, or even that these bears had remained on the territory of the commune since that date.
Bear protection associations are windy after this incident, because “the detection of a proven bear presence” should normally result in “suspension of driven hunts”, underlines France 3 Occitanie, which quotes the prefectural decree of May 10, 2021 governing the opening of hunting in Ariège. For Jean-Luc Fernandez, this measure is “inapplicable” because the bears “are present everywhere”.
A judicial inquiry has been opened
The Ariège prefecture said a judicial inquiry was opened to find out more about the circumstances of this accident. A bear carcass was found “below the place where the victim was found”, specify the authorities, who for the moment favor the thesis of an accident linked to the encounter between man and animal.
The investigation was entrusted to the Saint-Girons research brigade and hearings had already taken place this Sunday, November 21, report France 2 and France 3 Occitanie. The carcass has since been hoisted and transported to the Toulouse veterinary school to be autopsied, according to France 2. The prefect of Ariège announced that a prefect specially appointed for the issue of the bear will arrive on site on Monday.
Associations want to stop the beatings
On social networks, bear defense associations urge the authorities to suspend the beatings in the area, until the two orphan cubs, capable of “to fend for themselves at this age “, enter the den to hibernate. “We call on the hunters of the valley to be extremely vigilant towards these harmless and still fragile bears”, declared the Pays de l’ours-Adet association on its website.
“Since 2020, this is the fourth bear killed in the Pyrenees [deux en Espagne et deux en France] and the first three were killed illegally “, regrets Sabine Matraire, president of the association. About sixty bears currently live in the Pyrenees. This population comes from a program of introduction into this massif of bears from Slovenia which dates back to the 1990s.