The information is formalized on Tuesday but it was Sunday that a bear was discovered dead in a canyon located in the town of Melles, south of Haute-Garonne. The animal was “about a year and a half old”, according to Christophe Amunzateguy, the public prosecutor of Saint-Gaudens. He indicates that he opened on Sunday “an investigation for unauthorized destruction of protected species” entrusted to agents of the French Office for Biodiversity.
But the magistrate specifies that the autopsy carried out on Tuesday “clearly excluded any human intervention, and established that the death of this bear was certainly the result of a confrontation with another bear or another animal”.
At least four Pyrenean bears have died in the past two years, including three in 2020: Cachou, poisoned in Aragon, Sarousse, shot dead by a Spanish hunter, and a mystery bear killed by bullet(s) in Ariège. In November 2021, a hunter from Ariège killed a bear who had just attacked him during a wild boar hunt.
The regulations provide that plantigrades that die as a result of human intervention must be replaced. Which is not one of those who perish by natural or accidental death.