Too voracious, the Goiat bear will be captured the time it takes him (again) to put on a GPS collar



Goiat, a large male bear, filmed at night in the Pyrenees. – General of the Val d’Aran

  • The Goiat bear has been identified as the author of three attacks on herds in the Louron valley in the space of a week.
  • The Hautes-Pyrénées prefect has just authorized the capture of this 15-year-old “problem bear”.
  • The goal of this capture, the second for Goiat, is to replace him with a GPS collar so that he can track him.

The shepherds had flair. The successive attacks that recently occurred in the Louron valley bore, as they suspected, the mark of Goiat. The Hautes-Pyrénées prefecture confirms this Wednesday that this 15-year-old male bear, introduced in 2016 on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees, has been identified as being the author of the three predations committed, in particular in a sheepfold, between the 20th and April 27. These raids claimed the lives of two sheep, a lamb and a ram.

Goiat has been betrayed by his DNA and his spring hunting chart will earn him a new electronic collar placement and a van ride. This is what the Hautes-Pyrénées prefect, Rodrigue Furcy, calls “phase 3 of the problem bear protocol”. Phase 2 was triggered two weeks ago and allowed officers from the National Biodiversity Office (OFB) to shoot plastic bullets into the then anonymous bear’s hindquarters to scare it off. .

He probably crossed the border

This new step now authorizes the capture of Goiat. The time to re-equip it with a GPS tracker, which will allow it to follow its patrols and warn the breeders upstream. At least when we find him. Because he has not finally been able to be frightened since April 28 and everything leads to believe, new dead sheep in support, that he “probably left the national territory” to switch to Spain.

Since his arrival, Goiat’s voracity has never ceased to draw the wrath of the shepherds on both sides of the massif. After losing his first GPS collar, he was recaptured in 2018. His second tracker stopped broadcasting in the fall of 2020.



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