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FLORA AND FAUNA
Mild winter sees Pyrenees brown bears avoid hibernation
by Staff Writers
Barcelona (AFP) Jan 21, 2016


Finland approves controversial wolf hunt
Helsinki (AFP) Jan 21, 2016 - Finnish hunters have been authorised to kill nearly 20 percent of the country's wolf population in a controversial trial cull that opens this weekend, aimed at managing stocks, officials said Thursday.

Authorities hope the sanctioned hunt of nearly 50 of the country's estimated 250 grey wolves will curb illegal poaching, which some rural landowners have resorted to in recent years after seeing wolves roaming their property, sometimes killing their dogs and their livestock.

"We wish to gain experience (to see) if this could be one solution to the conflict around wolves," Sauli Harkonen, a director tasked with hunting administration at the Finnish Wildlife Agency, told AFP.

The cull begins on Saturday, with quotas for specific regions and carried out by licensed hunters.

No culls were authorised for eight years between 2007 and 2015 to protect the animal, after the European Commission accused Finland of breaching EU protection rules on the endangered species, resulting in widespread poaching in Finland.

In 2015, Finland resumed its first authorised trial hunt in a bid to address the deep rift between animal rights activists and wolf opponents.

The conflict had reached a peak in 2013 when a group of angry locals in the rural western municipality of Perho who perceived the animals as a threat took the law into their own hands and killed three wolves. Twelve men were prosecuted and eventually found guilty.

Poachers throughout the country's vast and remote forests had reduced the total wolf population to between 120 and 135 animals in 2013, from an estimated 250 to 300 in 2007.

Since 2013, the wolf population has rebounded to around 250, but many Finns house a deep-rooted aversion and fear of wolves.

Rural residents regularly express concern for the safety of their dogs and livestock, while some even claim their children are in danger, though there have been no reported attacks on people in modern times.

Environmentalists worry the month-long cull may destroy the wolves' genetic diversity.

The first trial cull was held in 2015 with 24 permits, and a total of 17 wolves were killed. This year the number of permits has been nearly doubled to 46, causing an uproar among protectionists.

"The population should be at least twice as big for it to be genetically healthy," said Mari Nyyssola-Kiisla, head of the wolf action group of the Finnish Nature League.

Several brown bears in the Pyrenees mountains that separate Spain from France have ditched their usual hibernation for food as winter temperatures remain unusually clement, environment and animal experts said Thursday.

Earlier in January, workers at the Alto Pirineo Natural Park on the Spanish side of the mountain range watched open-mouthed as footage from cameras placed in a rocky area showed a bear and her three cubs rummaging for food when they should have been snug in their cave.

"It's not normal to find a sow with three cubs not hibernating in winter," Santiago Palazon, head of the biodiversity and animal protection division of Catalonia's regional government, told AFP.

"They had been outside of their cave for at least one week."

These brown bears normally kick off their hibernation at the end of November and only emerge at the start of April, although for males that period can be shorter.

But an unusually mild winter in this corner of northeastern Spain, with temperatures between five and six degrees Celsius (41 and 43 degrees Fahrenheit) above average, appears to have changed the habits of at least some of the bears.

"The conditions in the wild were good, there was almost no snow on the ground, there were a lot of acorns from the autumn that they could still eat, and that could have made them leave the cave," said Palazon.

Native Pyrenean brown bears were almost extinct in the 1990s due largely to hunting and the first attempt to re-introduce them was in 1996 when three bears were brought from Slovenia which has a thriving bear population.

Now, there are around 40 living in the mountain range.

This unusual behaviour had already been detected in 2012 in Spain's northern Cantabrian mountains, where another 250 brown bears live, but this is the first time that it affects those in the Pyrenees, said Guillermo Palomero, head of the Brown Bear Foundation.

He told AFP that this was not necessarily detrimental for sows, which lose a lot of energy suckling and can compensate their non-hibernation by eating and filling up on calories.

"But that doesn't mean that climate change is good for them," he said, adding that experts were examining how higher temperatures could affect the availability of bear food such as acorns, wild berries or beechnuts.

"We will know if it benefits them or not in the long term."

dbh/mbx/lbx/ach

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