| 1 | Bulgaria tries to legalise hunting |
Bulgaria counts itself among a lucky few European countries to be swarming with brown bears, but for approximately 1 year, they were under severe threat of being randomly shot if they strayed too close to settlements. The saga started in 2011, when the government announced plans to hand out 73 brown bear hunting permits per year. Shooting brown bears had been illegal ever since Bulgaria exited the crumbling Soviet Union back in 1991. The sole exception was extreme self defence, but in 2010, 1 man was killed and another severely injured by bears in the southern province of Smolyan. With 550 bears officially roaming Bulgaria (but possibly up to 800), this pushed the government into setting an official hunting quota of 3% of the brown bear population.
Unfortunately for the government, Bulgaria was now a member of the European Union, and in April 2012, bureaucrats from Brussels responded by launching legal action, pointing to their own 1992 Council Directive 92/43/EEC, which protected large wildlife fauna across all EU member states.
In November 2012, Bulgaria backed down, and hunting brown bears became illegal once more. Money talked, as the Bulgarian government was unwilling to pay the financial sanctions that the EU was about to impose. The system was failing anyway, as while 27 legal permits had been issued over the previous year, only 2 bears were killed legally, while poachers kept up their secret slaughter unabated. Some argued that the panic of local farmers had been exploited by MPs connected to the hunting lobby.
| 2 | Sweden accidentally alters evolution |
Sweden is normally portrayed as a civilised, orderly place, but the country’s great secret is that its vast wild interior is controlled by around 2800 brown bears.
This isn’t a story about a new law, but rather the effects of an old one. Sweden has always allowed limited numbers of brown bear hunts from mid-August to early October. From 2010 to 2014, a total of 300 bears were shot dead legally, but since 1992, shooting mother bears with cubs has been strictly illegal. This is a braindead simple way to protect the population, but little did politicians realise that they were pulling the levers of evolution in realtime.
Over the last 25 years, a clear trend has emerged in Sweden for brown bear mothers to care for their cubs for longer, simply because this gives them a “human shield ” which is advantageous for survival. From 2005 to 2015, single female bears were 4 times more likely to be shot by hunters, and the average mothering time has shot up from 1.5 years in 1992 to 2.5 years now. The percentage keeping their cubs beyond 1.5 years increased by 5.5%.
Mother bears are showing their craftiness – they’ve read the rulebook and are exploiting it to their advantage. With longer mothering periods, the reproduction rate of bears is also falling, but this has been compensated for by higher survival rates due to cubs receiving more motherly wisdom.
| 3 | Romania flipflops on trophy hunting |
Aside from Russia, Romania has the highest number of brown bears in Europe, with 6000-8000 roaming the rugged mountain slopes and controlling access to hiking paths. Forget vampires – you’re far more likely to get your blood sucked by a bear in the deep, dark forests of Transylvania.
Starting in 2007, the Romanian government had given out annual hunting quotas. In 2016, 550 brown bears, 600 wolves and 500 lynx were allowed to be shot, via a loophole in the EU’s Habitats Directive which allowed large carnivores to be shot for damaging livestock. With the wink-wink nudge-nudge approval of the government, hunting companies across Romania would first submit their requested numbers of permits. This figure was for show only, a sky-high request which they knew would be ignored. The second figure was the real loophole-exploiter – it was the number of “problem bears”, whose killing the government had delegated to hunting companies as a compromise. With dozens of hunting companies in Romania, asking for 2 or 3 “problem bear” permits added up to hundreds per year, which were usually sold to rich foreigners for 10,000 euros.
By September 2016, cracks had finally appeared in this scheme, as the government decided to ban the trophy hunting of brown bears altogether. Revelations had just emerged that the brown bear population may have been overestimated, as in a shocking display of incompetence, individual paw prints had been registered multiple times in different regions, who each presented their own tally to conservationists.
| 4 | Romania flipflops again |
By September 2017, things were changing again, as environment minister Gratiela Gavrilescu reversed course and allowed hunting to resume. Plans were announced for 140 brown bear shootings by the end of 2017, not to mention 97 grey wolf shootings. The government promised to create a Wildlife Emergency Service armed with tranquiliser guns to deter problem bears peacefully, but according to WWF Romania, this squad only existed on paper, which was why they lazily defaulted to shooting them.
Slamming bears soon became a popular tactic with national politicians for getting votes from angry farmers, such as the notoriously bear-hating Transylvanian MP Carlos Borboly. In September 2019, the Romanian senate announced plans for a bear hunting free-for-all. While hunting would still be restricted to the time periods of March 15th to May 15th and September 15th to December 31st, the annual bear quotas would be abolished for the next five years.
One section of the bill was particularly worrying – that in future, the annual hunting quota for a species should always equal or exceed its average annual growth rate. Because population data in Romania was scarce, this would be pure guesswork which could have led to accidental extinction by work of a civil servant’s pencil. Ultimately, people power saved the day, as WWF Romania launched a Save the Bears petition which was rapidly signed by 35,000 people. When the bill reached the Chamber of Deputies on December 11th, it was voted down.
| 5 | French bears are granted protection |
Hunting bears is outlawed in the French Pyrenees. They wouldn’t survive long if it wasn’t, as the population numbers a fragile 60-70 across the wider Pyrenees mountain range, from a low of 3 in 1997. The police relentlessly pursue any farmers who dare to hunt bears, as illustrated by an incident in June 2020 when a 5 year old female was found dead and a $30,000 reward was offered for the killer’s capture.
Now things are tightening up further, as the French state council, the highest court in the land, ruled on February 8th 2021 that farmers were now banned from firing warning shots to scare bears away. Pyrenees authorities had dreamt up the scheme back in 2019 as a way for farmers to harmlessly protect their beehives and sheep. They gave it a trial run and reported decreased casualties, but the State Council now ruled that the loud piercing bangs were incompatible with the philosophy of maintaining bears in a natural environment.
The case was brought by angry animal rights groups who argued that bears could accidentally be shot. 2020 had been a bumper year for bears, as despite 3 being unlawfully killed, including a 6 year old male called Cacou who was mysteriously poisoned, 16 new cubs were born (although not all survived). The overall bear population jumped to an estimated 64 from 52 in 2019. This ruling was the latest chapter in the long-running “bear wars” between embattled farmers and the bear-loving, conservation-happy Paris government.
| 6 | Grizzly hunting banned in BC |
British Columbia is located in the west of Canada, although despite the name, King Charles has no control over it. The province is crawling with 15,000 grizzly bears and in December 2017, the government announced that the trophy hunting season for grizzly bears would be cancelled indefinitely. This followed an internet consultation where 78 of BC’s population voted in favour. First Nations peoples would still be allowed to hunt grizzly bears for spiritual and cultural reasons, but for other BC residents, grizzly hunting would be totally banned within the Great Bear Rainforest.
In the rest of BC, only hunting for meat would be allowed. It would be illegal to remove the trophy parts such as the head, claws and feet, which they knew was effectively the death knell given that few rich Americans would pay $10,000 simply to bring meat home. Tanners and taxidermists would now be required to notify the government of any bear body parts brought to them.
Joe Foy of the Wilderness Committee praised the end “to this barbaric, blood sport hunt”, while hunters warned that more moose would now fall victim to grizzlies. Bear protectors responded by arguing that bear viewing brought 12 times more tourism to the great Bear Rainforest than bear hunting. The opposition Liberal party had a different angle: they argued that the laws were a clever distraction from the government’s recent approval of the controversial Site C Hydroelectric Dam.
As of 2024, the BC hunting ban still stands.
| 7 | Sleepy bears protected in Russia |
The frigid interior of Russia is so vast and untamed that to Moscow’s parliament, it probably feels like any laws they make are a drop in the ocean which nobody even registers. Nevertheless, 2011 saw a positive step for bear protection when the Russian parliament banned the hunting of sleeping bear mothers in their winter dens.
The sacred hunters’ codebook, the “rules of the hunt”, was now updated to restrict the hunting season to two time periods: April 1st to May 31st, and August 1st to November 30th. Anyone disobeying these restrictions would be punished with fines, and a possible trip to a remote Siberian penal colony.
Many hunters supported the move, as they saw no pride in marching into a sleeping bears’ hideout and shooting a defenceless animal. This had previously left waves of orphaned cubs who had struggled to survive without their mother’s wise teachings. It marked a resounding victory for the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), whose 16 year campaign to end the winter den hunt had attracted 400,000 signatures in support. This time, both the Duma and Federation Council passed the law, which also made it illegal to hunt cubs under 1 year old and mothers with cubs under 1 year old. Both brown bears and Asian black bears were protected by these new laws.
| 8 | Russia tries to ban bear baiting |
While the gruesome frontiers of bear cruelty have retreated slightly in recent years, with dancing bears outlawed in Ukraine and Chinese bear bile farms steadily shutting down, the barbaric practise of bear baiting remains rampant in Russia. In order to train dogs for hunting, bears or foxes are tied to a tree with chains so that dogs can circle and bite them, often while a laughing crowd of villagers watches on.
Most of the bears are visibly panicking and unable to fight back. 200 of these bear baiting stations exist across Russia, and the bears’ teeth and claws are commonly removed by force. In December 2017, the Russian state duma (the lower parliament) passed a bill to outlaw the practise, with 408 deputies voting in favour, 2 against, and 3 abstaining. The bill proposed “contactless bating” instead, where chained bears would be separated from dogs by a mesh fence or glass plane.
Siberian hunters reacted with fury, claiming that their traditional way of life was under threat. Protests swelled in Moscow and St Petersburg, and the higher chamber of parliament rode to the rescue, voting down the bill in January 2018, which was only the second time since September 2016 that senators had contradicted the lower chamber. Ugly accusations flew of highly placed, wealthy hunters who were pulling the puppet strings.
Environmentalists claimed that Vladimir Putin supported them and that the president would personally intervene to save the bears he claimed to care about, but this never happened. As of 2024, bear baiting remains legal in Russia.
| 9 | Alaskan hunting methods brought back |
April 2017 saw angry headlines that President Trump, who was 2 months into his term at the time, had signed a bill designed to “kill bears and wolves”. The furore had its roots in June 2016 when the Alaskan Board of Game authorised a list of new and inventive hunting tactics, which the Obama government deemed to be barbaric and outlawed across the entire US. By February 2017, the Republicans had taken Washington, and Rep. Don Young of Alaska proposed a bill to repeal these restrictions.
This was swiftly approved by the House (225-193) and Senate (52-47) and signed into law by President Trump on April 3rd 2017. What were those “barbaric” hunting practises? These included chasing brown bears down and shooting them from aircrafts, trapping them with steel-jawed leghold traps and wire snares, and luring them in with food to shoot them at point blank range.
Once again, this sparked a massive debate. Opponents argued that the Republicans in Washington DC were helping their gun buddies from the NRA, which had supported the bill alongside the large hunting organisation Safari Club International. Supporters argued that the 2016 restrictions were an unconstitutional power grab, and that the Alaska state government would always know what was happening in its own backyard more accurately. Congressman Young argued that shooting bears and wolves from aircrafts was extremely difficult anyway and that the media had overhyped the story.
| 10 | The neverending Yellowstone debate |
The bear laws of Yellowstone have been a rollercoaster ride over the last 15 years, with never-ending twists and turns. The most recent saga started in June 2017 when the US federal government announced the official delisting of the Yellowstone grizzly as a threatened species. After swelling from 136 in 1977 to 700 in 2017, individual states were finally allowed to hand out hunting permits again.
Idaho handed out none, Montana gave out 1 permit, but Wyoming jumped right in and handed out 22 permits. Outraged conservationists tried to buy up the permits themselves, and the outcry reached a fever pitch when one hunter promised to shot sow 101, the famous roadside mother bear, calling her the ultimate trophy. “The grizzly population has more than recovered,” said Tex Janecek of Safari Club International.
In September 2018, bears lovers’ fears were soothed as a district court in Montana put a halt to the hunt. 2 suspenseful years passed, before the 9th circuit court declared that Yellowstone’s grizzlies were officially protected again. The initial delisting had been rushed, they argued, with insufficient evidence put forward that the grizzly bear population had stabilised. They warned that the isolated pocket of Yellowstone would never truly be safe until it linked up with Canada’s bears.
Weirdly, this entire cycle had happened 10 years earlier, beginning in 2005 and ending in 2013 when the delisting was again ruled as unconstitutional by a lower court. Yellowstone’s bears remain protected as of 2021.
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