Not really!, but one brown bear showed up a few days ago, the first one since 1835 when the last bear was shot in Germany. For "safety reasons" they are going to shoot the animal! If you want to protest here is Mr. Schnappauf's E-mail [email protected]

Couldn't find a translation, sorry:
http://www.n-tv.de/670520.html

My understanding is that they are going to tranquilize the bear - not kill it - to take some measurements for scientific purposes, maybe tag it, and release it back into the wild. They believe it came over from Austria, where there is a small population of brown bears.

hausfrau,

that's only partly right. Experts, and among them the WWF, plus the government of Bavaria are advocating to kill the bear.
Some environmentalists try to hunt him down so that they can tranquilize him and relocate him before he actually gets lethally shot.

Wow, that is not what I had heard. I am surprised. I would think the environmentally-minded animal rights-supporting citizens of Germany would be in an uproar over this! (This is the country that has - wisely IMHO - banned docking dogs' tails and ears!)

They claim, it got used to human contact and now is dangerous. But there must be a better alternative!

If it came from Austria why can't it be repatriated?

According to the report the animal is not a menace to humans while it remains in the border region, and has so far only killed some game or livestock to support itself. Nor would
integrate with other bears in a zoo, so the best other alternative to repatriation is to build an enclosure for it to live in alone.

Harzer

There's a moat around a castle in Czech Rep. somewhere (was it Cesky Krumlov?) where bears were kept. Maybe they could use a new one.

That would be a horrible iefe for a wild animal. I can;t believe there's no place in Austria - or further east - where they can't release it in the wild.

(I'm happy to see thre are some areas in which we're ahead of the europeans - re-introducing wolves into the Adirondacks and making sure the bears near inhabited areas in New Jersey are tranquilized and moved - unless they actually become dangers in people's backyards.)

The castle near Bamberg, Germany used to have a bear. It would catch eggs and other food thrown to it. The eggs made a real mess when the bear chomped down on them.

I don't think they ever replaced that bear after it died.

I'm not if favor of shooting the bear in Bavaria, but I am in favor of killing the silly "Lions on Parade" in Munich. The "Bears on Parade" in Berlin is equally silly.

nytraveler - wolves have been re-introduced in East Germany (coming from Poland) and this bear really was a danger in people's backyards.

It is sad, but I tend to agree on shooting the bear. However, it seems he anticipated the threat and moved back to Austria

I wonder if this is the same bear that was roaming the Mustair valley in Switzerland last summer?

Some reports suggest the bear originally came from Northern Italy, perhaps released (from where, they don't say). It's crossing back and forth between Austria and Germany, probably trying to find a mate. Good luck with that.
I find it very wimpy that the Germans (and Austrians, too) are so freaked out over a single bear. Try living in the Rockies, Pacific NW, Alaska, or even the East Coast. Bears are everywhere!
When we lived in rural WA state, we saw bears, coyotes and mountain lions--right in our back yard.

I find this more than a little strange. It is just ONE bear. In Finland there are estimated 1500 bears living all over the place. They live even 20 kilometres of the center of Helsinki, so really literally in my backyard, just 5 kilometres from little old me. And just yesterday it was in the news that one bear mother who had a cub had attacked a woman who managed to save herself by kicking the bear´s nose. But it is over ten years when a bear last time killed anybody human.
They are hunted, but only in the fall, and only according to yearly quota to keep the amount somehow manageable.

It is not bears that are the problem, it is wolves, because also their amount has exploded, and EU doersn´t allow them to be shot. Finland was dragged into some Brussels court for wanting to shoot some wolves because parents in eastern Finland are afraid to send their children to school by foot. So now they have go to school by a taxi. People are actually planning to catch a couple of dozen, transport them and let them loose in Brussels. It would be nice to see how long they would be protected.

This is one of the downfalls of the EU coming into existance. Before the EU, that bear would never have got into Germany without his passport and appropriate papers. Now all Austrian bears can just roam through any border at all like they own the place. Jeez.....

> People are actually planning to catch a couple of dozen, transport them and let them loose in Brussels. It would be nice to see how long they would be protected.

They won´t survive more than 3 seconds in Brussels traffic. Maybe you should just start driving like the Belgian do...

This thread is really an eye-opener for me. In Minnesota, in the northern US, where I live bears are very common. Now I more truly understand why so many Europeans come to the US for nature and the national parks. Plus I can understand why some of the guidebooks to various parts of Europe emphasize the fact that people might see various forms of wildlife. We didn't get why people might be thrilled to see a fox or deer or eagle or bear because here they are so commonplace.

Fox and deer are indeed common too in Germany. Centuries ago the whole (large) population of bears was hunted and killed until they became extinct. Only the names remained. Imho we "owe" them somthing.

"They won´t survive more than 3 seconds in Brussels traffic."

Wolf is not a stupid animal. They would of course use sidewalks.

The latest is that some British bear benefactor is prepared to spend as much as 1.5 million Euros to save this bear, who has had another scary contact with a hiker out in the border territory of Bavaustria.

Harzer