Bears: the ultimate rewilding success
Brown bear of the Pyrenees. Picture: Office français de la biodiversité
Given how domesticated our landscapes have become it’s incredible to think that our nearest EU neighbour, France, has brown bears. Bears were once widespread across Europe, including throughout Ireland, but the conversion of natural habitats to farmland and cities gradually pushed them into the most remote mountainous regions, where tracts of dense forest survived alongside pastoral farming that had adapted to live alongside big predators. However, even in these places persecution programmes in the 19th and 20th centuries nearly wiped them out completely. It’s astonishing that small populations managed to survive at all, including one in the Pyrenees.
Legal protection and the EU’s Habitats Directive brought an end to the hunting of bears but even so, the Pyrenean population was thought too small for long-term survival — the risk of inbreeding was simply too great. Unlike wolves, which can happily move quietly through human-dominated landscapes, and which have naturally recolonised virtually every mainland European country, bears are slow breeders and need large areas of relatively undisturbed natural habitat.
So, in 1996 France embarked on the most audacious reintroduction programme seen to date in Europe when bears from Slovenia were transferred to the Pyrenees. The comeback of brown bears in Europe (there are now more of them than in the lower 48 states of the US), along with a range of other species including wolves, lynx, beavers, vultures and eagles, is among the most astonishing and inspiring conservation success stories ever seen.
I recently spent some time in the Ariège region of the Pyrenees, not because I wanted to see bears — there was practically no chance of that happening — but because I wanted to see, if even only briefly, what it was like to be in a landscape populated by bears and people.
Of all the rewilding success stories, the reintroduction of the bear to France has been arguably the most controversial. While living with large carnivores nearly always creates conflicts and social pressures, the reaction in France in the last 25 years has been particularly vexed, with acts of intimidation and vandalism targeted at anyone expressing support for the project. While other regions of Europe will use the presence of charismatic animals such as bears and wolves to draw in tourists, in Ariège you will see no bears on t-shirts, postcards, or posters. In fact, you will hardly see any mention at all of the fact that bears are in these hills.
Conflict has primarily derived from damage that bears can do to free-ranging livestock, particularly the large flocks of sheep that are traditionally herded from the lowlands to high-altitude pastures in summer. While bears are largely vegetarian, they will attack and eat sheep. My B&B owner, a horse breeder, also told me he had lost some of his animals to bears. I asked him about how he felt about living alongside these large, and potentially dangerous animals. He seemed resigned that “bears will be bears… but the problem is always the people!” He was alluding to the government which, rightly or wrongly, is perceived as being distant (both physically and emotionally) and deaf to local concerns. However, when I asked him about rural de-population he brightened up considerably, there are more people in his area now than when he arrived 30 years ago and the local primary school is full. However, these new arrivals do not want to shepherd sheep on slopes that can be more than 2,000m above sea level.
Nevertheless, the bear reintroduction has been a qualified success. Funding from the EU has provided support for farmers to protect their livestock, including with specially-trained guard dogs.
For some in the area, co-existence between people and bears will never be possible but it is happening all the same. The most recent census from the French authorities records 76 animals — an increase from 58 in 2019.
What lessons are there for Ireland where, sooner or later, we will have to start seriously considering the reintroduction of predators, perhaps not yet bears, but more likely the shy and unobtrusive lynx?
Firstly, it’s that people, including farmers, can (and do) live alongside large animals like bears.
However, it is not easy. It requires a lot of time and effort in talking and listening to people on the ground: mere compensation programmes for losses of livestock are not sufficient. Secondly, it’s that we must move from schemes that ‘compensate’ to those that ‘reward’ farmers for their knowledge and engagement. There must be a good income in rewilding and nature restoration.
As a society, if we want wild nature once again on our impoverished island, we have to be prepared to pay for it.
