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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/sep/12/europe-saved-its-predators-from-brink-of-extinction-so-why-killing-thousands-bears-wolves-lynx-aoe>
"The forest was unnaturally still when Soňa Chovanová Supeková first picked up
the bear’s scent. It was roe deer rutting season in southern Slovakia, and the
hills below the Carpathian mountains were busy with tourists biking and
foraging for mushrooms. Fellow hunters who had come face to face with bears had
told Supeková the fear had been so great they could not lift their rifles.
Sitting with her father, a hunter in his 80s who had killed a few bears, she
found herself in a similar state of dread – she was out on that trip expecting
to kill deer, and did not want to come on a bear unexpectedly.
“Fear permeated me … the smell penetrated to the tip of my bones,” says
Supeková, the founder of the Club of Slovak Lady Hunters. But the bear never
appeared. The next morning, the daughter-and-father hunting duo saw its
droppings. “We breathed a sigh of relief only in the car.”
Europe’s brown bears are a protected species. But they – alongside wolves and
lynxes – are increasingly crossing paths with farmers, forestry officials and
hunters such as Supeková. The appetite for killing big carnivores has shot up
as wolf and bear populations have grown, several bear attacks have made
headlines, and politicians have taken aim at laws that brought back them back
from the brink of extinction.
Sweden has issued permits to kill 486 of its brown bears, about 20%, this
hunting season, which runs until mid-October. In 2023, the country conducted
record-breaking culls of lynxes and wolves. Romania’s MPs voted in July to
double its hunting quota from 220 brown bears to 481. In Slovakia, where a bear
was recently filmed rampaging through a village, lawmakers voted in June to
allow hunting near villages under certain conditions. In July, the European
court of justice ruled that recent wolf culls in Austria and Spain were
unlawful. Earlier in the year, Switzerland also faced legal challenges for its
proposal to kill 70% of its wolf population.
The debate around shooting protected species has provoked such fury among
farmers, hunters and conservationists that it has bubbled up to the highest
levels of bureaucrats in Brussels. The European Commission, whose president,
Ursula von der Leyen, had a pony killed by a wolf two years ago, is seeking to
downgrade the animal’s protection status."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
