Fatal encounter. A 70-year-old hunter is hospitalized this Sunday in Toulouse, seriously injured in the femoral artery. He had time to tell his fellow beaters that he had been attacked and bitten several times by a bear before killing him. The face-to-face between this female who was accompanied by two cubs took place on Saturday afternoon in the Couserans massif, in Ariège, where the ursine population is particularly dense. This dramatic but rare accident is likely to fuel the war that is raging between pro and anti bear in the Pyrenees. The two camps are already firing their first cartridges.
Here is what we know about this event and its first consequences.
An investigation to shed light on the circumstances
The hunter, originally from the area, took part in a wild boar hunt in the town of Seix, about sixty kilometers from Foix. It was the high mountain gendarmerie platoon which intervened to rescue him at 3.30 p.m. He was first helicoptered to Chiva, the intercommunal hospital located between Pamiers and Foix, “in a worrying state”, before being transferred to the Toulouse University Hospital.
The Ariège prefecture remains cautious about the unfolding of the facts: “The gendarmes spotted a bear carcass below the place where the victim was found, which could support the thesis of an accident linked to the meeting between man and animal, ”she wrote, adding that a“ judicial investigation was opened to understand the circumstances of this accident ”.
On Facebook, those close to the pastoral community, indicate that the hunter attacked from behind by the bear then dragged for about thirty meters, that he managed to cling to his weapon and fired twice.
The anti-bears are stepping up to the plate
For Jean-Luc Fernandez, the president of the Ariège hunting federation, joined by AFP, this dramatic accident illustrates “the impossible cohabitation” with the plantigrades in the Pyrenees. “This is really what we feared,” laments Christine Téqui, the socialist president of the departmental council of Ariège, who has also been hammering out for a long time the argument of an unrealistic cohabitation. It must also install this Thursday in Saint-Girons the Parliament of the mountain, a consultative body imagined with the Chamber of Agriculture and the shepherds and whose goal will be very topical: “Work with the State to resolve of the file of predators in the massif ”.
An extremely rare accident
“A wounded hunter, a killed bear and two orphan cubs, everything is sad and sad in this story, everyone has to lose”, reacts this Sunday Alain Reynes, director of the Pays de l’Ours-Adet association. If they wish above all a speedy recovery to the hunter, the friends of the bears also wish to underline the rarity of this type of incident. “This is the first time that this has happened in twenty-five years! Driven hunting is much more accident-prone ”, Alain Reynes reminds us of 20 minutes.
Whether they are hikers, hunters or shepherds, associations have identified nine loads of bears in the Pyrenees between 1996, the date of the first reintroductions, and 2021. They have generally concerned females in a row, made aggressive by a feeling that their offspring was in danger. Until Saturday’s accident, these charges had given rise to nothing but great fears, except for a hunter injured in the arm while falling.
The bear could be Caramelles
The authorities do not comment, but for Alain Reynes “the most probable hypothesis is that the bear slaughtered is Caramelles”. The presence in the area of this 24-year-old female with two cubs has been confirmed by DNA records. If it is confirmed that it is her, then this mother of more than a dozen Pyrenean bears will have had a tragic fate. Her mother Melba was killed by a hunter in 1997 during a beatings, leaving her orphan with her brother Bouxti.
Orphan cubs old enough to fend for themselves
The cubs of the year now isolated in the area must be “eight or nine months old, an age at which they can feed themselves without their mother and enter the den alone as Caramelles and Bouxti were done in 1997”, considers Alain Reynes. Pro-bear associations insist that these cubs are “harmless, but still fragile”. They ask the agents of the French Biodiversity Office (OFB) to watch over them until they enter hibernation and demand the suspension of beatings in the sector.