Parliament doubles the number of bears to be killed this year and leaves the door open for the shooting of special specimens: “Reduces nature to a menu from which smart boys choose their trophies”

The Chamber of Deputies voted on Wednesday the law that allows the shooting of almost 900 brown bears, double the prevention quotas now. The project was proposed by the former UDMR minister of the Environment, currently deputy prime minister, Barna Tánczos, and supported by 50 parliamentarians, some of them – hunters. But it is not the only measure adopted and contested by specialists, writes the investigation and system analysis site Snoop.

• The law is yet to reach the president for promulgation.

If it is promulgated by President Nicușor Dan, 859 brown bears will be shot this year, in the prevention quota, and another 110 could be killed in the intervention quota. The prevention quota is divided between the hunting funds according to the number of incidents with wild animals that have occurred over time and taking into account the number of exemptions offered. The intervention one, valid at national level, is used as a kind of reserve if a hunting fund exhausts its prevention quota.

The new law prohibits the hunting of females with cubs that are less than 2 years old. Instead, give it a go at shooting trophy bears.

In the last three years, the bear hunting quota has been successively increased. In 2023, the first prevention and intervention quotas were introduced. In 2024, they were doubled: 426 bears prevention quota and 55 intervention quota.

In both cases, the initiator was Senator Barna Tánczos, former Minister of the Environment. He was the initiator this time as well.

“Time proves that without the intervention of hunters, the brown bear problem cannot be solved in Romania,” said Tánczos in a press conference last December, according to Agerpres.

A contested census

His proposal came after the publication of the results of the first DNA-based bear census, which shows that there are between 10,400 and 12,770 brown bears in Romania. The study was carried out by the Ministry of the Environment, through the “Marin Drăcea” National Forestry Research and Development Institute (INCDS), and cost 53.5 million lei in European funds.

Snoop has shown in the past how the first prevention quotas, from 2023, were based on an unrealistic and unscientific study, with data collected by the counting method by hunting associations and forest reserves. Hunters ochiometrically counted bears and paw prints on the ground, so there was a possibility that the same animal could be counted more than once or a bear could be missed.

Genetic analysis, on the other hand, is a method recommended by researchers because it is more accurate and leaves less room for error. In other words, it can provide a closer to the truth estimate of the bear population. DNA-based monitoring involves collecting faeces and animal hair from the field and analyzing them in the laboratory. For this study done by the ministry and the “Marin Drăcea” Institute, published last year, more than 24,000 samples were collected from 25 counties.

For the most realistic figures, the genetic analysis must be done once every 7-10 years.

The study carried out by the “Marin Drăcea” Institute is contested by NGOs and researchers for lack of transparency. The institution did not publish the raw data, but only the conclusions, and the project team also included members of some hunters' associations. One of them is Ovidiu Ionescu, a professor at Transilvania University in Brașov. He did the study that formed the basis of bear hunting quotas before 2016 and was both a hunter and an adviser to the Ministry of the Environment.

“It is all the more difficult to accept the doubling of quotas under these conditions,” says researcher Cristian Papp. He is the coordinator of the wildlife monitoring and conservation programs at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) organization and a lecturer at “Babeș Bolyai” University in Cluj-Napoca, where he teaches the management of protected areas.

The gate for shooting trophy bears

The law also comes with an important change: increasing to 400 the CIC score from which bears can be shot.

• “a) in the case of hunting funds that have a prevention level of two or three specimens, at least one specimen whose fur does not exceed 400 CIC points will be harvested;
• b) in the case of hunting funds that have a prevention level of 4 or 5 specimens, at least two specimens whose fur does not exceed 400 CIC points will be harvested”

For example, the Râușor hunting fund in Argeș County, which has a prevention quota of four bears, must harvest, that is, shoot, at least two bears with a reduced CIC score. If they meet this condition, the other two hunted bears can have over 400 CIC points. And the bigger and prettier the bear, the higher the CIC score. The higher the score, the higher the amount hunters pay to the hunting associations to obtain this trophy.

• The CIC (International Council for Hunting and Game Protection) scoring is the standard system for evaluating hunting trophies, based on dimensions such as skull length/width, length of fur or horns. It determines the value of the trophy, with specific thresholds (eg: over 400 points per bear) that may impose harvesting restrictions – source: AJVPS Mureș

“This opportunity has opened up to hunt trophy bears, based on an amount of money. If we are talking about big trophies, surely influential people will come to hunt bears and they will not be eager to shoot smaller specimens, as happens in the case of problematic bears”, says researcher Cristian Papp. He says this very gate will further direct the interest of hunters to the big ones, not to the habituated, young bears that “run around the communities” and cause problems. “It's with dedication,” he points out, referring to the new law.

Hunting association websites abound with tourist packages costing between 3,000 and 20,000 euros. Hunters therefore pay thousands of euros per trophy – the bear shot “preventively”.

“Protectors of law”. Who are they and how did the MPs who supported the quota increase react?

Parliamentarian Gheorghe Nacov, from the minorities, on the list of initiators, sees the quota increase as “a step towards normalization” because the brown bear is “again in the care of the hunters, the protectors of rights”, he wrote on Facebook.

On social networks, Gheorghe Nacov poses next to shot deer and boars, with a gun in his hand. In the past, he has put his name on various initiatives related to the amendment of the hunting law.

Nacov is not the only hunter among the initiators.

“A bill that reduces nature to a menu”

The law passed on Wednesday by the Chamber of Deputies is also contested by the former Minister of the Environment, the liberal Mircea Fechet. In a reaction on Facebook immediately after the vote, Fechet said he could not vote for “a bill that reduces nature to a menu from which smart boys choose their trophies.” The quota is very high, he explained, and he needed traceability and control, a solution that started with the problem bears, not the trophy bears, “which may never have met man.”

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