Since 2019, the measures of scaring plantigrades in France, including non-lethal shots, are renewed. This time they will be permanent.
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The goal is to prevent herd attacks. Bear scaring measures in France will be made permanent, including non-lethal shots, challenged several times by the Council of State, according to an order from the government of Emmanuel Macron published Tuesday, June 21 in the Official Journal.
In 2019, the French government implemented measures to scare brown bears in the Pyrenees on an experimental basis. These scaring measures have since been renewed each year, always on an experimental basis.
The Ministries of Ecological Transition and Agriculture now believe that with three years of hindsight, the balance sheets show “the absence of apparent negative effects” on the bear population and “a certain effectiveness concerning the avoidance of predation”, according to the argument posted during the public consultation of the decree at the end of April. The decision was therefore made to make these measures permanent.
The device still provides that, on derogation from the prefecture, breeders can use simple scaring, that is to say sound, olfactory and light means. a scare “reinforced” using non-lethal shots (double detonation cartridges or rubber bullets) may be requested in certain circumstances of repeated attacks, if sound and light measures have not been sufficient, excluding the heart of the National Park of the Pyrenees.
These non-lethal shots are regularly denounced by bear defense associations, which have won several times before the Council of State. In its last decision of April 2022, the highest administrative court had again canceled these provisions for the decree of 2021.
While the brown bear is a protected species, the Council of State had considered that the reinforced scaring provisions did not allow “not always to make sure” that the derogations “do not affect the maintenance of the populations concerned in their natural range and do not compromise the improvement of the status of the species”.