At the beginning, an all-clear: There is no bear on the way to Bavaria. That’s what Wolfgang Schröder says. The wildlife biologist is an expert on bears and wolves and observes the scene very closely. He wasn’t really surprised when a young brown bear appeared in a mountain valley in the Miesbach district of Upper Bavaria in mid-April 2023. Schröder had even expected this. The bear had previously remained inconspicuous and largely unnoticed a few kilometers further in Tyrol for months. “It was only known in expert circles that he was there,” says Schröder. “It was a matter of time that he moved to Bavaria.”
As usual, the alpine farmers and politicians were reflexively extremely alarmed. Nobody in Bavaria saw the bear. You could only tell that he was there by the paw prints he left in the melting snow of the mountains. And the fact that he killed a few sheep, near Oberaudorf, for example. That was enough for strong slogans. Especially since the state elections were approaching and the mood among the rural population is already heated because of the re-spreading of wolves. Environment Minister Thorsten Glauber (FW) did not rule out the possibility that the bear would be shot. And Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) and his deputy Hubert Aiwanger (FW) made a no less eloquent appearance on an alpine pasture.
The bear, which came from Trentino, trudged far away from the hustle and bustle from the Bavarian foothills of the Alps through the Chiemgau mountains into Berchtesgadener Land. There he killed another sheep in mid-May, then disappeared to Austria. A week later, a train ran over him in Salzburger Land. And why is Schröder so sure that no new bear is on the way to Bavaria? “Quite simple,” he says. “There is no one in sight, neither in Austria nor in Switzerland.”