WWF-Romania and Thousands of Supporters Preserve Protected Status for Bears

Posté le 16 décembre 2019

Together Possible: thanks to the almost 35000 citizens that signed WWF-Romania's petition against bear hunting!

11 December - Following today's final vote in the Romanian Chamber of Deputies, the bear remains on the list of strictly protected species under the Hunting Law, despite last-minute attempts by some deputies to promote the version adopted by the Senate in September.

WWF-Romania thanks the almost 35000 citizens that signed our online petition and all those who gave their support over the last few months to our effort to convince the parliamentarians to reject a false solution to the problem of human-bear conflicts. With your support, an amendment with dangerous consequences for the largest remaining population of brown bears in Europe was eliminated. According to a letter from the European Commission, the amendment would have contradicted protections given to brown bears under the EU Habitats Directive and would have automatically stimulated an infringement procedure against Romania.

We will continue to monitor how the new provisions of the Hunting Law will be applied, especially the one related to the introduction of "prevention quotas." Implementation must be based on solid data obtained by scientific methods and done in the spirit of the Habitats Directive. We also hope that rational measures will be taken, based on proven effective methods, to solve the problem of habituated bears and human-bear conflicts.

More information here