French hunter given suspended sentence for kill

[ad_1] An 81-year-old hunter in France has been fined and handed a four-month suspended jail sentence for killing an endangered bear within the Pyrenees mountains.

The person stated he had "no different possibility" however to open fireplace on the brown bear when it attacked him throughout a boar-hunt in 2021.

Fifteen different hunters had been additionally fined and should collectively pay greater than €60,000 (£51,000) in damages to environmental associations that had filed a civil go well with in opposition to them.

The 150kg feminine bear, nicknamed Caramelles, has since been preserved by a taxidermist and is on show on the Toulouse Pure Historical past Museum.

The Foix Felony Courtroom heard that the group had been boar-hunting within the Pyrenees, the mountain vary that separates southern France and Spain, when two bear cubs emerged.

Shortly afterwards their mom appeared, charging on the man and dragging him a number of metres, earlier than he shot and killed the animal.

"She grabbed my left thigh, I panicked and fired a shot. She backed away growling, she went round me and bit my proper calf, I fell, she was consuming my leg," he instructed the courtroom.

"I reloaded my rifle and fired."

The capturing occurred within the Mont Valier nature reserve close to the village of Seix, Ariège. Prosecutors stated they need to not have been there within the first place, as a result of it was 1,300ft (396m) outdoors an authorised searching space.

However the defence lawyer for 14 of the hunters, Fanny Campagne, criticised "the shortage of indicators indicating that searching was prohibited".

The shooter was fined €750, his rifle has been confiscated and his searching licence revoked.

In an announcement, bear-preservation affiliation Pays de l'ours stated the decision "appears justified".

"All of the hunters had been discovered responsible, which is crucial factor for us," the affiliation's president, Sabine Matraire, was quoted as saying in Le Monde.

"We hope that this ruling can be adopted by a elevating of consciousness among the many searching group," she added.

Brown bear populations noticed a pointy decline within the Pyrenees, with solely about 70 left in 1954, in line with the area's tourism board.

However numbers have slowly climbed up since Nineties when three bears had been introduced over from Slovenia as a part of a reintroduction programme.