Protecting the European brown bear
2,221 views · Published 15 July 2017 · 4:49 · Indexed 20 September 2026
Channel: Alan Heath · 2017 · Pets & Animals
The World Conservation Union (IUCN) lists the brown bear in Europe as a species of ‘Least Concern’. However this classification includes European Russia, which still has a large bear population. Within the European Union it is listed as ‘Near Threatened’ which is exacerbated by the fact that most populations are small and fragmented, for example, this film was shot in the Alpine Zoo in Innsbruck, Austria which exhibits local species but in all of Austria there are only around 25 bears and they are not even all in the same place. Despite the brown bear being included in Appendix II of The Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats (also known as the Berne Convention) as a strictly protected species, a number of countries including Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Finland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ukraine and Turkey have excluded bears to allow for population management. The question is, how do people feel about bears in their midst? The bear once roamed across all of Europe and now it is limited to mountainous exclaves. Would you feel happy going into a forest inhabited by bears and wolves? Of course in North America, where people face a more aggressive bear, the grizzly, it does not seem to pose too many problems. Hikers get used to it and know what action to take. Europeans do not. Part of the diet of bears is meat so obviously they will go for livestock when they can with sheep and goats being particularly at risk. Like all animals, they will go for easily available food when they can find it which will mean bins and in doing so they lose their natural fear of people. They will certainly go for fruit orchards and beehives too. Attacks on people are usually related to defending their cubs or perhaps food. However a number of countries report encounters which can lead to serious injuries including Romania, Slovenia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia and Finland. In September 2004 I was in a hotel near Zakopane, Poland and we were warned to be very careful about going out that night because a bear had been seen near the hotel. The result was of course that we did not get much sleep as we were on the balcony hoping to see the bear, cameras at the ready. Like all hibernating animals they can be easily woken during the winter and may flee to what they consider safer ground but as it is winter they could starve in the process. Another threat are roads and railways which can divide up populations resulting in in breeding which brings the associated risks of disease. Conservation groups may argue for overpasses for bears, wolves and other animals but this is not particularly realistic in most cases for reasons of cost. The good news, according to a 2014 report pubished in Science magazine is that large predator populations are stable or rising in Europe and this includes the brown bear, wolf, the Eurasian lynx and wolverine. There are now around 17,000 bears in Europe and for comparison there are 12,000 wolves, 9,000 Eurasian lynx and 1,250 wolverines. Indeed the only European countries without a breeding population of large carnivores are the UK, Ireland, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. The reasons for its success in Europe include political stability, increasing populations of prey species such as deer, boar, rabbits, hare and others as well as financial support for non-lethal livestock protection such as electric fences, which mean that farmers do not resort to shooting wild predators. Furthermore the EU habitats directive has compelled member states to protect and revive rare species. I think that one good reason for the preservation of wildlife is that it is financially worthwhile. I appreciate that protecting agriculture is expensive but I think that the amount of money spent by tourists to see animals like bears may make conservation a financially viable option. For example, Romania has been successfully promoting itself as a bear sighting destination and this draws in tens of thousands of people every year. So how would you feel about the reintroduction of bears to where you live?
