Romania, Slovakia, Croatia, the Czech Republic and Finland are calling for brown bears to no longer be considered a "strongly protected species".
Brown bears are "super-predators" that pose a threat to both livestock and humans: for this reason, their level of protection in Europe needs to be reduced, in order to make culling easier. This is the demand put forward by five European Union countries: Croatia, the Czech Republic and Finland, which have announced their support for a joint request originally submitted by Romania and Slovakia.
The issue was discussed during a meeting of Agriculture ministers held in Luxembourg on 22 June. The governments of Bucharest and Bratislava insisted that "effective species management" is necessary and that new measures should be adopted "urgently". All of this was set out in a preparatory document.
The five nations in question point to the example of the wolf, whose protection was recently weakened across the European Union: in that case, the species moved from "strongly protected" to simply "protected" status, which made it easier to cull individual specimens. For the governments calling for a similar decision to be applied to brown bears as well, this "would guarantee a reasonable and balanced level of social and economic risk".
Finland in particular has been among the most enthusiastic supporters of the initiative: the Agriculture minister of the Helsinki government, Sari Essayah, explained that for the Scandinavian country "it is very important, since the bear population on our territory amounts to nearly 2,600 individuals. At present, this represents a risk to humans. We need to resort to a form of preventive hunting".
Romania has insisted that its bear population (around 11,500 individuals) is unmanageable, claiming that animal attacks on humans over the past five years have resulted in 14 deaths and 150 serious injuries. Slovakia, which is home to 2,500 individuals, similarly reports four people killed and 64 injured.
But the five nations in question are not alone. Germany, for example, while not directly backing the request, has indicated that it is in favour of "targeted derogations" to allow a certain number of bears to be removed. France (which has around 90 bears concentrated in the Pyrenees) takes a different view, indicating a preference for strategies to drive the animals away, as clarified by Agriculture minister Annie Genevard.
Environmental non-governmental organisations have consistently expressed strong reservations about decisions that lead to reduced protection for animal species. In countries such as Spain and France, the need has already been highlighted in the past to avoid hindering the reintroduction of a species considered at risk of extinction due to its presence on the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and to train hunters and the general public so that they understand the behaviour of brown bears when they encounter humans.
