• The Councillor of Territory and Sustainability explained that the meeting has served to analyze the protocol and detect difficulties of application of phase 2
  • Calvet has highlighted the intervention protocol with bears in the Pyrenees, approved in the State Commission for Natural Heritage and Biodiversity in October 2018

The Councillor of Territory and Sustainability, Damià Calvet, together with the General director of Environmental Policies, Ferran Miralles, has participated in the working meeting on the intervention with bears at the Pyrenees, with the Secretary of State for Environment, Hugo Morán, the Aragonese Councillor, Joaquín Olona, and the Trustee of Aran, Paco Boya. In this meeting the intervention Protocol was analyzed and there was detected a series of difficulties in implementation of phase 2.

The Councillor has been reaffirmed in the existing Protocol. “Of the will to preserve the presence of the bear and that this does not alter human activity, whether tourism or extensive livestock, an intervention Protocol emerged in October 2018, which was done in a record time by all the Administrations (also Aragon and Navarra). This Protocol clearly states how to act when there are specimens with anomalous behavior, repeatedly predatory or aggressive, as it seems is the case of Goiat and Cachou, has explained Calvet.

In the application of the Protocol, and specifically in phase 2, Calvet said that, within the framework of the bear working group, “will promote an improved Protocol intervention, in phase 2”. Regarding to this phase, firstly, it was decided that the working group that has elaborated the Protocol, reviews it. And, secondly, “we have specified that intervention teams must be constituted which enable both temporary and physical continuing monitoring of these specimens with anomalous behavior”.

In the case of Catalonia, Calvet explained, “we already have two intervention teams formed by staff of the Generalitat and of the General Council of Aran so they can operate 24 hours a day. But in the case of Aragon this intervention team does not exist and, in France, there is no such protocol. Today we have agreed the constitution of these intervention teams to continue applying even the bear passes from on territory to other”, with the aim that this Protocol has no borders, to be maximum effective.

The Councillor insisted that “we want that the presence of the bear to be compatible with the human activity and this is why we need to improve the existing Protocol”.