Roughly translated by TWIN Observer
FOIX / AFP
Thousands of French farmers protested on Saturday against plans to reintroduce wild bears in an area of southwest France. The farmers are also angry over the additional measures proposed to protect the region’s wolves and vultures.
Some demonstrators dumped sheep cadavers and manure in front of a municipal building to protest against the “rewilding” of the mountainous region near the city of Foix near the French Pyrenees. The farmers claim that the plans threaten their livelihood, and denounce what they describe as the “uncontrolled expansion” in the number of wolves in the country.
Even France’s environment minister Ségolène Royal was getting into the delicate wolf debate on Saturday and found that wolf attacks have become the commonplace.
“The damages for the animal owners have become too big” she wrote in a statement and presented figures that more than 6,000 cattle were killed by wolves last year.
“The press has become too hard on the farmers and their families and their situation should be taken more into consideration” the Minister explained further in the statement.
An extensive hunting period during the 1930s extirpated the few wild animals in the area, but they returned in the 1990s from Italy, and they are now protected by law.