The Oberallgäu district administrator Indra Baier-Müller does not need anything like last year at the Hubertus Chapel in the Hintersteiner Valley near Bad Hindelang again. What began in May 2023 as a suspected sighting of a large predator quickly turned out to be a visit from a bear, photographed by a cyclist. “This is a populated and well-developed tourist area, so I was very worried,” says Baier-Müller. The worries about this one bear soon disappeared, at least in the Allgäu the animal has not been seen since then.
Currently, however, a bear is roaming around just across the border in the Lechtal valley in Austria – several sightings prove it. The animals can come back at any time, which is why Baier-Müller has launched the “Brown Bear Initiative”, an exchange between experts and affected Bavarian districts. Now, after a further meeting, the group has formulated its first demands: the district administrators of Rosenheim, Traunstein, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Ostallgäu and Oberallgäu are demanding clear legal requirements and concepts to be able to remove conspicuous animals quickly and legally.
The management plan is to be revised, the protection status reconsidered and the Federal Nature Conservation Act amended; the districts want to network and work together in an emergency. “We need certainty in our actions to prevent damage from occurring here, especially to people,” says Baier-Müller.
Forestry scientist Wolfgang Schröder, for example, thinks it is quite possible that the young bear from the Lech Valley will appear in Bavaria again this year. If not in the Allgäu – where it would have an easy crossing from the Lech Valley – then in the Werdenfelser Land, which it can reach via the Plansee, the Ammersattel and the Ammer Valley. “It is a young animal, probably three or four years old and has wandered from Trentino to the Lech Valley in Tyrol,” says the 83-year-old forestry scientist, who lives near Murnau in Upper Bavaria and taught wildlife biology and wildlife management at the Technical University of Munich for many years. Despite his advanced age, Schröder is well informed about all current developments regarding bears and wolves, especially in Bavaria and Austria.
Trentino, where around a hundred brown bears live, is the region in Europe from which young bears occasionally migrate to Tyrol or Bavaria. Most recently, a young brown bear roamed through Upper Bavaria just over a year ago and was eventually run over by a train near Salzburg. “The current animal is very likely a male, and the bear is also still at the age when animals migrate long distances,” says Schröder. “And it most likely arrived in the Tyrolean Lech Valley last year and spent the winter here.”
Schröder assumes that this is the animal that briefly appeared in the Allgäu in the summer of 2023 and was spotted there in the Hintersteiner Valley, but immediately ran away again. “Even then, the bear showed that it is – as befits a bear – a very shy animal,” says Schröder. “It has never been seen near human settlements or pastures.” Most of the evidence in Tyrol and Vorarlberg comes from paw prints in the ground or wildlife cameras. There were only a few sightings and they were all at a comparatively great distance.
District Administrator Baier-Müller would prefer these animals – if they really wanted to migrate to Bavaria. But what if they repeatedly approach populated areas and kill grazing animals? In that case, the district administrators agree, removals should be made easier, similar to how wolves are now handled. The bear is particularly strictly protected in accordance with the EU FFH Directive in the Federal Nature Conservation Act, and so-called access, disturbance, possession and marketing bans apply.
In formal legal terms, says Traunstein district administrator Siegfried Walch, the governments of Swabia or Upper Bavaria can make the decision about shooting. However, the hurdles are so high that they can be overturned by the courts. It should not be the case that it takes four days to prove that a bear has visited and then there is no legal certainty about how to deal with it. “We need to have the discussion now,” demands Baier-Müller, as does her East Allgäu colleague Maria Rita Zinnecker, also with a view to tourism and alpine farming.
“That doesn’t mean that everything will be thrown out of control.”
The decision to remove animals, says Baier-Müller, does not have to be made by the district administrators. As long as there is no population of bears in Bavaria, one can live with state or government decisions. “But they must be made promptly if they are necessary.” Siegfried Walch does not accept criticism of such demands: “That does not mean that everything is shot in the wild. We hunt all other animals too. If they become native here, it is completely logical that a removal must take place.” If no action is taken, the alpine farming system will be in danger. Measures to protect herds are particularly difficult with bears.
Arnold Schuler, President of the South Tyrolean Parliament, agrees with Walch about the removal. South Tyrol has experience in dealing with bears, and so does Schuler, who was responsible for agriculture and forestry there for ten years. This year, he reports, eight bears are to be removed in Trentino for the first time. “That was previously unthinkable.” Trentino was mistaken three times when bears from Slovenia were introduced there in 1992 to crossbreed them with the remainder of an old, native population: the female bears remain in Trentino, and the population does not spread across the entire Alpine arc as intended. The population is multiplying much more than predicted – and the populations have not mixed.
According to Schuler, in Trentino it is assumed that around 13 percent of the approximately one hundred animals are so-called problem bears that approach people and kill livestock. Schuler says that it is not possible that a genetic test is needed to remove such animals in order to know that one really has the right bear in front of one’s gun. The “high probability” must be enough, and no one should have to fear lengthy legal proceedings if they accidentally kill the wrong bear.
In theory, everything is well regulated in Trentino when it comes to dealing with aggressive bears. “But there is a lack of practical implementation.” The Bavarian district administrators warn that Upper Bavaria and the Allgäu are much more densely populated than Trentino or South Tyrol, for example, which makes a visit by a bear even more critical – and this is precisely why they are calling for legal certainty and clear concepts for emergencies.