Districts near the Alps in Bavaria are calling for a legal change to the protection status of brown bears. The district authorities are demanding that they be able to react more quickly in the event of an influx of bears and, if necessary, have potentially dangerous animals killed.
This was emphasized by representatives of several districts on Monday after a networking meeting at the Oberallgäu district office in Sonthofen. The local district administrator, Indra Baier-Müller (Free Voters), had suggested such a network a year ago after a bear was discovered in a tourist region in her district.
The aim is to have a closer exchange at the local level. The districts need clarity on how to deal with dangerous animals, said Baier-Müller. She demanded that the state government take appropriate action. But it is not about shy animals that are reserved and stay away from people. “Nobody wants to wipe out the population,” she said. It is about protecting people.
Traunstein district administrator Siegfried Walch (CSU) said that there is no pure natural landscape in the regions of southern Bavaria where bears can live without contact with people. It is not possible for people and so-called large predators to coexist in this region. “We must be able to make quick decisions on the ground.”
In the spring of last year, according to the State Office for the Environment, one or more brown bears roamed through southern Bavaria. At that time, the authority registered 13 sightings of bears in several districts. In May 2023, a bear was hit and killed by a train in the Austrian state of Salzburg. Genetic tests have shown that this animal had previously been in Bavaria.
This spring, a bear was once again photographed by a wildlife camera in Vorarlberg, Austria. However, it is not yet known whether this brown bear has moved on to the neighboring Allgäu. The state office has not yet found any evidence of a bear in Bavaria in 2024 in its bear monitoring.
In 2007, the Bavarian state government issued a bear management plan with guidelines in the event of an immigration of brown bears. The year before, Bruno the bear had been shot in Bavaria. This animal was classified by the authorities as a so-called problem bear that poses a danger to the population. Bruno can now be viewed stuffed in a Munich museum. Since 2019, he has repeatedly provided further evidence of bears in Bavaria.
So-called problem bears are those that repeatedly approach settlements or repeatedly kill livestock. According to findings from South Tyrol, this affects around 13 percent of wild bears.