The Romanian government has proposed killing three times as many bears annually as last year to curb “overpopulation” of the protected species. According to the proposal presented on Thursday, up to 426 bears could be shot per year; last year there were 140. The proposal immediately drew criticism from environmentalists.
According to an estimate by the Ministry of the Environment, around 7,500 to 8,000 bears currently live in Romania. From 2016 to 2021, there were 154 bear attacks in which 14 people died and 158 others were injured. According to the government’s proposal, hunters could shoot the animals in addition to “technical staff”.
Environmental groups criticized the proposal as a free pass for trophy hunting, which is actually forbidden. Romania banned this in 2016, but allowed the killing of hundreds of so-called sturgeon bears with special permits.
According to the Romanian section of the environmental protection organization Greenpeace, the current initiative is a “cynical proposal to replace bear management with commercial hunting”. Common in Romania, the brown bear is one of the 1200 protected animal species in the European Union.
Earlier this month, Environment Minister Barna Tanczos said that “too many people had died” on the bear attacks. It is “our duty to protect human life”.
Romania has the largest bear population in the EU. However, according to experts, the exact number of bears in the Carpathian Mountains is unclear because the country uses an outdated counting method. The results of a first more modern DNA-based census from 2021 are still pending. (AFP)
