An 81-year-old French hunter has prevented jail after killing an endangered feminine bear that attacked him within the Pyrenees in 2021, in an incident that sparked fierce criticism from environmental associations.
The defendant, who mentioned he had no selection however to open hearth when a brown bear attacked him whereas he was boar-hunting within the mountain vary separating France and Spain, was given a four-month suspended jail sentence.
The court docket additionally fined 15 different defendants who participated within the hunt a number of hundred euros and briefly revoked the searching licences of two of them.
As well as, all 16 defendants should collectively pay greater than €60,000 (£50,900) to the environmental associations that introduced the civil swimsuit.
Throughout the March trial in Foix in southern France, the prosecution mentioned that the principle defendant and 15 different hunters shouldn’t have been within the Mont Valier nature reserve within the first place.
Defence lawyer Charles Lagier had argued that each one the defendants needs to be acquitted, saying that the hunter killed the bear as a result of he had “no different choice”.
On 20 November 2021, two bear cubs emerged from the woods in entrance of the hunter. Then their mom appeared, charging on the man and dragging him for a number of metres. He shot and killed the animal.
Based on the investigation, the bear – nicknamed Caramelles – was killed 400 metres (1,300ft) outdoors an authorised searching space.
When the cubs emerged, “I checked out them with admiration,” the defendant mentioned throughout the trial. “I made myself very small. Then the mom noticed me. Our eyes met, she charged.”
He mentioned he had no selection however to shoot.
“She grabbed my left thigh, I panicked and fired a shot. She backed away growling, she went round me and bit my proper calf, I fell, she was consuming my leg,” he added. “I reloaded my rifle and fired.”
The defendant “killed a bear as a result of he had no different choice; it was necessity. This doesn’t name for prison fees,” Lagier argued throughout the trial.
However Alice Terrasse, the lawyer representing a number of environmental associations on the trial, referred to as for all 16 hunters to be convicted and requested a bear be launched “to compensate for Caramelles’ dying”.
Such an operation would value €100,000, Terrasse mentioned in March.
Animal rights activists view bears as integral to sustaining a fragile mountain ecosystem below menace from human exercise and the local weather disaster.
Bears had practically disappeared from the mountain vary earlier than France started a reintroduction programme within the Nineteen Nineties, importing them from Slovenia.
France’s biodiversity workplace estimates the Pyrenees are house to between 97 and 127 bears.
The presence of the predator has led to rising tensions with farmers due to the menace they pose to their livestock.
However for Alain Reynes, of the bear preservation affiliation Pays de L’Ours, the case affords a possibility to “assist transfer ahead the controversy on how searching and bears can coexist”.
This article by Agence France-Press was revealed by The Guardian on 6 Might 2025. Lead Picture: A brown bear within the Pyrenees. {Photograph}: Hemis/Alamy.
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