A brown bear was shot and wounded on December 26, 2021 during a wild boar hunt in Cantabria, northwestern Spain
A brown bear was injured on December 26, 2021 during a wild boar hunt in Liébana, Cantabria, the Government of this autonomous community in the northwest of the country has revealed.
The day after the incident, two residents were able to photograph a bear in the same area, which was limping with its front left paw.
The authorities specify that the facts took place during an organized hunt in the Saja Regional Hunting Reserve and that an investigation had been launched by the gendarmes of the Environment, the Seprona.
The Cantabrian Cordillera, which stretches from Galicia in the west to the Basque Country in the east, is home to around 350 bears, mainly in Cantabria and Asturias. This population is steadily increasing.
Five bears dead since 2020
The circumstances point to the deaths of at least five bears in the past two years, in France and Spain. Last November, a hunter killed a bear who bit him in Ariège, and in November 2020, two bears were killed on the same day in Spain, one in Aragon (Sarousse, which had been introduced in 2006 in Haute -Garonne) and another in the Cantabrian mountain range (this time in Asturias).
Two males were probably killed on purpose, Cachou by poisoning in April 2020 in Catalonia under incredible conditions, and Gribouille shot dead in Ariège in June 2020 – the investigation was unsuccessful.