Bears and people peacefully co-exist in Carpathians

By Stefan Korshak Jul 8, 2010, 14:44 GMT

Bucegi Mountains, Romania - There are signs everywhere of bears in the rugged hills south of the Romanian city of Brasov.

Mountain trails offer the walker abundant proof he is not alone in the woods: claw marks ripped into tree trunks and palm-sized tracks deep in the mud. Most worrying are fresh bear faeces.

No one knows exactly how many brown bears live in Romania, but the country contains Europe's biggest population of Ursus arcticus, some 6,000 animals, experts agree. The intelligent omnivore - an 'apex' predator with virtual no predators of its own - weighs on average 200-400 kilograms.

A hunting ban under Communism and a controversial tradition of tolerance towards bears are responsible for Romania's abundance of the animal. Though the bears don't always return human kindness, they share the same neighbourhood with a minimum of conflict.

'We work by day, the bears come out at night, and we don't bother each other,' said Mihai Valy, a Faragas Mountains logger. 'Call it peaceful co-existence.'

This is the backbone of Europe's brown bear population, with the entire Carpathian Mountain range home to 8,100 bears, compared to some 2,600 in Scandinavia, 35 to 40 in the Alps and 20 in the Pyrenees, according to World Wildlife Fund estimates.

Former Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu is widely credited for those healthy numbers, as he banned nearly all bear hunting.

Romania's bear population is currently stable, with hunters and foresters shooting around 250 bears a year, a number replaced by new cubs, according to the Ministry of Forestry.

'Absolutely, there are plenty of bears out there, give them a chance and for sure they'll kill a sheep,' Ioan Pascan, a shepherd in the Harghita Mountains, told the German Press Agency dpa.

Before the collapse of Romania's Communist regime in 1989, bear hunting had been allowed only by top party officials and foreign- currency-paying foreigners. Afterwards, the practise to a virtual standstill, and the brown bear population soared.

By the mid-2000s, some mountain valley Romanian cities, otherwise well-known as ski resorts, became notorious for packs of bears wandering populated outskirts at twilight.

As recently as 2008, Brasov's Jepilor Street saw nightly visits by some 28 marauding bears, which brazenly prowled backyards. They retreated only grudgingly when confronted by police, armed with no more than noisemakers and rubber bullets.

Tolerance by the human population has not always been reciprocated by the bears. One mauled an American woman in 2008.

Working with international animal management experts, Brasov's city government launched an emergency bear control programme aimed at capturing as many raiders as possible, and releasing them in the remote Parang mountain range.

The effort, reportedly resulting in the forced exile of more than 260 Brasov-area bears, has paid dividends. The packs are gone, and individual visits are now rare.

'Oh they're (the bears) still around, but they don't raid my dumpster all the time,' said Elena Troianu, a housewife. 'It's a lot better now.'

But residents are more sensitive about encroachment by bears than they were before.

A single immature male encamped in a backyard in Busteni, a town adjacent to Brasov, made national news last month - a dramatic change from even a year ago, when visits by four or five went unreported.

Dozens of brown bears can be seen near the Transylvanian village Zarnesti, site of a 69-square-hectare animal refuge. Most spent their earlier lives in cages as restaurant attractions or circus sideshows.

The reserve, set in hardwood forest and secured by electric fences and video surveillance, is partly financed by the World Society for the Protection of Animals. The 41 brown bears have room to roam and are well-fed on food donated by local groceries, said reserve spokeswoman Mariana Bota.

Attacks still occur. Brasov saw one probable killing in the summer of 2009, with a man found at the forest's edge, mauled to death. The attacker was never found.

A year later, a female brown bear killed a woman walking on a road next to her hillside house above the village Zarnesti. Hunters tracked down and shot the animal.

But Romania's bear threat on the ground seems minimal.

'We Romanians cannot imagine our mountains and woods without bears,' said Bota. 'It is part of our cultural consciousness.'