Romanian Animal Rights NGO Fights Planned Bear Cull

Bear cubs with their mother in a Romanian forest. Photo: Romanian NGO Agent Green 

Animal rights activists and environmental NGOs on Friday condemned an order allowing hundreds of bears to be killed signed by the former Environment minister of Romania, Tanczos Barna, on the last day of his mandate at the ministry.

The order allows a quota of almost 500 bears to be killed on the grounds that they pose a danger to humans.

“Based on the order, we again approved prevention and intervention quotas for the bear population: 426 specimens can be removed for prevention purposes and 55 specimens for intervention purposes,” Barna wrote on his Facebook page on Thursday.

Tanczos Barna is one of the leaders of the Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania – UMDR – a party that represents the Hungarian minority in Romania and has been in various governing coalitions almost continuously in recent decades.

“In the Szeckely Land [in central Romania, inhabited mostly by ethnic Hungarians], since 2016, the increased number of bears has increasingly threatened people’s lives and their property,” explained Barna. He added that he worked on this order for the last 905 days in which he was at the helm of the ministry.

The order was sent to the Romanian Academy for approval, after which it will be published in the Official Gazette.

Environmental NGO Agent Green in Romania said the order is a serious mistake that will decimate the bear population in Romania, one of the last bastions in Europe of these rare animals.

“The brown bear is a species protected at the European level, which is very important for maintaining the balance of ecosystems. Because it is a species that can move over long distances, EU member states must manage this species so that it is habitable,” Agent Green’s lawyer, Catalina Radulescu, told BIRN.

She said Agent Green would take the Environment Ministry to court to get the suspension and annulment of the “abusive minister’s order” and would report the case to the European Parliament.

“Agent Green recently published a petition submitted to the European Parliament and a detailed report on the legislation managing these bear species. This legislation from Romania violates European legislation, endangering both the species’ conservation objectives and the citizens’ life and safety,” she added.

The exact number of bears in Romania is unknown because a scientific count has yet to occur. Most unofficial estimates put the population at at least 6,000, or around 60 per cent of the entire European population, excluding Russia.

“Counting by estimation based on visual observations of bears is not relevant because a bear can be counted several times,” added Radulescu.

In May 2021, Romania was in the middle of a scandal after Austrian Prince Emanuel von and Zu Liechtenstein killed a bear called Arthur that was one of the largest specimens in Europe, during a hunting party. The prince admitted hunting in Romania but said he did it lawfully and that the animal was dangerous.

“Hunting to control the overpopulation of some species and ensure their survival is a tradition in our family. In this case, it also served to remove a danger,” he said at the time.

This episode raised suspicions that the Environment Ministry is encouraging bear hunts under the pretext that they are dangerous to people.

There have been several isolated cases in Romania recently where bears entered people’s homes or attacked shepherds in mountain areas.

Agent Green’s lawyer believes that the order issued by former minister only “satisfies the pleasure of hunters to obtain bear trophies”.

“This hunting takes place without any kind of environmental supervision, even in the bears’ natural environment, which is absolutely prohibited by European legislation,” she concluded.