Minister of Environment with comments after complaints by people seeing bears on their properties

"The number of bears in the country is increasing and we will have to do something soon. Whatever the solution, it will not be simple and it will hardly be popular."

In the BNT programme "Bulgaria in 60 Minutes" on September 12, members of the public said that in the region of Gabrovo (Central Northern Bulgaria), there are again bears breaking into people's yards. There have been dozens of reports from residents of different villages.

People complain that bears enter the yards of their houses and even climb on garages in search of food.

***

At the end of August, 2023, residents of two villages in Gabrovo district alerted that bears were roaming the streets near their homes in broad daylight. First from the village of Zhaltesh and then from Stoevtsi, people complained that the wild animals visit populated areas.

Then, on social networks, people from other Gabrovo villages and outlying districts said that predators of the species were visiting them as well.

The presence of bears near settlements in Gabrovo is not unusual, but the mayor of Stoevtsi village, Petko Chervenski, says this is the first time a bear came to a closer distance with people and that scares them. The wild animal has vandalized an orchard, bee hives and knocked down fences on inhabited properties, the mayor reports.

"The problems are getting serious. There have been numerous calls to me. People can't get into their gardens to harvest their crops," he said.

He pointed out that there are probably several bears and at least one of them has cubs. Bears are a protected species and are not subject to shooting, he added.

This spring, because of increased reports of bears entering settlements, a response mechanism was introduced in Gabrovo region. Then mayors and deputy mayors received instructions, and in the villages, information was placed in a prominent place for residents on how to act.

According to the people of Stoevtsi, this mechanism, which provides for a working group of experts in the field of hunting, veterinary medicine and local authorities to react first to reports of brown bears and establish whether there is a threat to people, does not work.

The people from the villages are counting on the predator that roams past their houses to be caught and relocated to its natural habitat. However, experience has shown that it happens that the bear comes back from the forest to people again. So the bear caught in Gabrovo region this spring and moved to the forests of the Central Balkan Park, not long after that re-appeared in settlements in Troyan and Lovech.

"Last year and the year before, nature was kind. There was plenty of food, which most likely led to the survival of a large number of cubs. In the second year the cubs are expelled from their parents and accordingly look for a place under the sun. Most often these young cubs are the most prone to experimentation, and they have also been pushed to the periphery of the habitat," explained Alexander Dutsov, species conservation expert at WWF-Bulgaria.

Permits to shoot a bear are only issued with the signature of the Minister of Agriculture, he added, advising people to register the damages to their properties so they can get compensation.