FRANCE: A Slovenian brown bear, one of five released in the French Pyrenees earlier this year, has been found dead at the foot of a cliff.
The animals were set loose under a programme designed to preserve a species in danger of extinction. The dead bear, named Palouma, was the first of the group to be released.
Farmers who feared the bears might attack their livestock protested, and some even threatened to hunt them down. However, initial inquiries by French police suggest Palouma suffered an accidental death. Farmers' representatives said the accident showed Slovenian bears, used to living in forests, were ill adapted to the rocky landscape of the Pyrenees.
But French ecology minister Nelly Ollin said bears regularly died of such accidents, even in Slovenia. The conservation group World Wide Fund for Nature says bears are responsible for the deaths of less than 1 per cent of sheep that die each year in the Pyrenees.
Before the Slovenian bears arrived, there were thought to be 14 to 18 brown bears in the Pyrenees. Slovenia has one of the biggest bear populations in Europe, with around 550 in the wild.