Since the reintroduction of the bear in the Pyrenees in the 1990s, sheep farmers have complained of predation. The French Office for Biodiversity (OFB) counted 331 bear attacks on livestock in this mountain range in 2022, compared to 333 the previous year.
The prefectural decrees, legalizing the scaring and desired by the breeders, were quashed by the administrative justice, the bear being a protected species.
"I regret it because it is one of the ways to preserve the herds, without questioning the bear. We need to rework legally, so as not to spend our time in court," the minister said in Foix, after meetings with rural actors.
The pro-bear associations had taken legal action to annul texts authorizing "on an experimental basis" the prefects to grant derogations for "simple scaring using sound, olfactory and luminous means" of plantigrades, but also "scaring reinforced with non-lethal shots" (double-detonation cartridges or rubber bullets).
The minister began his trip to Ariège with the visit of the sheepfold of Jean-Pierre Mirouze, who lost 260 ewes in 2019 during a rockfall, attributed to a bear.
"We can never measure enough the distress of people who find themselves confronted with predation (...) There is a despair that arises from predation that must be understood, that must be heard, it is not primarily a question of compensation," Fesneau said.
Philippe Lacube, president of the Chamber of Agriculture and anti-bear figure, was delighted that the minister went to "meet the real life of the territories". He estimated that nothing has happened since a meeting between elected officials from Ariège with the ministers of Agriculture and Ecological Transition, in October in Paris. "The case hibernated for six months. We can't go on like this," he quipped.
In 2022, the OFB recorded 76 bears in the Pyrenees, an increase compared to 2021 (74) and 2020 (64).
© 2023 AFP