Agent Green, one of the most prominent NGO fighting to preserve the brown bear population in Romania, set an open petition to the European Parliament. The petition is addressed to Roberta Metsola, the President of the European Parliament and aims to tell European officials about the brown bear population in the country.
Here is the petition addressed by Agent Green to Roberta Metsola.
Dear Mrs. Roberta Metsola,
We would like to call your attention to the implementation of the Council Directive 92/43/EEC of 21 May 1992 on the conservation of natural habitats and of wild fauna and flora (the Habitats Directive) by the Romanian Government concerning one of the protected species from Annex II and IV, Ursus arctos.
The species is endangered by the normative acts passed since 2021, respectively, The Emergency Governmental Ordinance 81/2021 and the Law that approved and modified the Ordinance, no 197/2022. As a result of the government propaganda that brown bears are very dangerous and cold-blooded killers, the Minister of Environment Waters and Forests recently proposed an Order for killing 486 brown bears.
The national action plan for conserving the brown bear population in Romania, approved by the Minister of the Environment no. 625/2018, was never implemented, as the Minister recognized in front of the Court of Justice, as detailed in the annexed report.
The Brown Bears are being sacrificed in Romania because of the lack of conservation measures and to indulge the hunter’s need for trophies. The Arthur Affaire in April 2021 is a perfect example of the illegal hunting parties organized in Romania.
The mentioned legislation allows the killing of Brown Bears by a team composed of a representative of the hunting fund and a gendarme, a representative of the town hall and a veterinarian, who do not have previous expertise, do not possess equipment or substances for veterinary use and are not trained to intervene in such situations where capture is necessary, tranquillizing or possibly euthanizing some bears. They are allowed to kill if the bear seems to be dangerous, both inside the localities and in their natural environment, regardless of the age of the bear. This practice occurs in Natura 2000 sites and violates the Habitats Directive.
The order allowing 486 bears that are neither dangerous nor create any prejudices to anyone is based on only a preliminary study, as it is stated on the first page.
The study only criminalizes bears and categorizes them as dangerous without analyzing prevention and conservation measures. At the same time, this study completely lacks an assessment of the impact of killing the 486 bears; a scientific assessment of the bear population is lacking. Also, an analysis of the causes that lead to human-bear conflicts is missing to determine the most appropriate prevention methods.
As a result, the hunting activities, which are illegal under the current EU legislation, lead to human-bear conflicts, which are provoked by the hunters interfering in the natural habitats of the bears. Therefore, instead of killing bears, Romanian authorities should address the root causes of such encounters, namely illegal hunting in protected areas.
Logging destroys the habitat for bears beyond repair. As a result, they search for shelter and food and are pushed toward human settlements.
We ask you to address this issue in the committee for Petitions and, by doing so, help to protect natural habitats for bears in Romania. We sincerely rely on the understanding of the Members of the European Parliament and their will to address on the EU level the severe issue of hunting, as well as the equally serious issue of the national authorities voluntarily and knowingly going against the EU obligations for nature conservation.
Best regards,
Gabriel Paun, President
The context of the petition to stop the killing of bears in Romania
The bear population in Romania is lower than the official estimates. NGOs conducted extensive research and tracking of bear families and concluded that the bear population is lower than the official figures by at least 25%.
For two years in a row, the volunteers from Conservation Carpathia Foundation collected 1,700 DNA samples from bears and sent them to a laboratory in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The results bluntly contradicted the official figures.
We got a density of 17-18 bears per hundred square kilometers. The official data show around 21 bears per hundred square kilometers. These official data are subjective and shouldn’t be used in the management of this species in Romania.
Ruben Iosif, biologist, Conservation Carpathia Foundation
The fact is that the Romanian authorities seem to have been misusing the data. More precisely, the collection of this data is the problem. The Romanian Ministry of Environment and Forests use the forest rangers’ observations to count the bear population. How precise can they be?
More than that, a recent study published by the same Ministry shows the bear population is close to 8,000. The very minister who signed the order for killing bears in Romania asked, in the past, for the killing of 5,000 bears and estimated, personally, in 2015, that the bear population in Romania is at least 10,000. These bluntly fake numbers made Euronews call the minister “bad news for the bear population in Romania.”
Interestingly, the minister, whose name we prefer not to recall and who has just been ousted from the Ministry after the Hungarian Minority Party entered Opposition, signed the order on his very last day at the office. How cynical is that? What interests can be found behind this sort of order?
About Agent Green
Agent Green is the NGO that came up, along with Charlie Ottley, with the brilliant idea of involving companies in what they called the “bear rights campaign.” They appealed to the companies using bears in their logos, names or communication and asked them to contribute to protecting this species.
The famous British director Charlie Ottley was thrilled to be the main character in the videos shot for the Bear Rights campaign.
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