After the discovery Tuesday of a bear killed by gunshots in Ustou, in Ariège, the association Sea Shepherd France offers 10,000 euros to the one who will convict the poachers.
Male bear found Tuesday shot dead in Ustou, Ariège. In order to speed up the investigation, the international NGO Sea Shepherd announced, this Thursday, June 11, to offer a reward of 10,000 euros to those who would allow to identify the person responsible for the death of this brown bear. “The information will be transmitted to the authorities in charge of the case and the reward will be paid if the testimony leads to the indictment of the culprit (s),” the organization said in a statement. At the same time, Rewild, an association co-founded by Sea Shepherd, is going to file a complaint, by becoming a civil party.
Our reward of 10,000 euros enabled us to find the seal decapper from Concarneau last year. Hopefully it will work to find the bear assassin in Ariège.
All info: https://t.co/RItLebL3wU pic.twitter.com/QguLv1P6nK
– Sea Shepherd France (@SeaShepherdFran) June 11, 2020
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“The bear is a protected species and its killing is strictly illegal,” said the organization. As the hunting season is currently closed, “the investigation seems to be heading towards a deliberate act of poaching or a bad meeting with a breeder”, she continues, the presence of the bear in the Pyrenees being a thorny issue. The last Pyrenean bear, Canelle, was killed by a hunter in 2004 “while she was defending her cub from attacks by the hunting dog […]”said Sea Shepherd. The hunter was then ordered to pay compensation of 10,000 euros to be paid to various associations.” Symbolic “, according to Lamya Essemlali, president of Sea Shepherd France.
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Hence this reward. “The objective is on the one hand to motivate people who know how to give information and on the other hand to send a message to poachers: we are motivated, we want them to be identified and prosecuted”, warns the president .
“Exemplary sanctions”
“If the French State has set up a program of reintroductions of bears torn from their Slovenian homeland to repopulate the French Pyrenees which have not been able to spare their own bears, its responsibility is all the greater to protect them of poaching, in a context where there remains a deep hatred of predators. Justice, on the other hand, must condemn exemplary and dissuasive sanctions to all who attack this protected species. Too lax sentences are real incentives for poaching “deplores Lamya Essemlali.
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In this particularly tense context, “the state also has a responsibility, it must ensure that the environment is safe” for the bears, said the president of Sea Shepherd. The Minister of Ecological Transition, Elisabeth Borne, said that the state would also file a complaint in this case.
Towards the same outcome as for Finistère seals?
According to the authorities, there are only 52 bears left in the Pyrenees today, the vast majority of which are in Ariège (around forty). The killed bear, a young male, is the second found dead in the Pyrenees this year. The growth of the Ursine population in the Pyrenees, after reintroductions started in 1991, has for years fueled tensions with breeders who consider their presence incompatible with pastoral activity.
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The 10,000 euro reward operation had already paid off in 2019, after the discovery of two decapitated seals in Finistère. Fifteen days had been enough for a key witness to come forward. Two sailors have since been summoned to court. Their trial is scheduled to take place in September. “We hope it will have the same effect this time,” said Lamya Essemlali.
This way of participating in the search for the truth, on the sidelines of the investigative work started by the gendarmes of Ariège, is not unanimous with bear defenders, who are worried about the consequences. “FNE clearly disapproves of this method,” for example said the France nature environment association in the evening.
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