An 81-year-old man is on trial for killing an endangered bear that attacked and left him with broken legs after dragging him for several metres. Andre Rives was hunting boars in the French Pyrenees on November 20, 2021, when the female brown bear called Caramelles, protecting her cubs, charged and mauled him in a terrifying assault.
It is reported that two bear cubs first came out of woods before the mother attacked Mr Rives, biting and dragging him before he managed to shoot and kill it. The elderly man was left with fractures to both his legs and severe bleeding from an artery.
He was in a state of shock when a fellow hunter came to his aid and helped stop the bleeding before he was taken away by a rescue helicopter. And Mr Rives now faces legal proceedings as the brown bear is a protected species in the Pyrenees, a mountain range separating France and Spain.
The case has caused fury in the local community in Ariege where hunters have held protests in support of the man. The bear was killed 400 metres outside an authorised hunting area. Retelling what happened in court, Mr Rives said that he made himself very small after seeing the cubs but “then the mother saw me. Our eyes met, she charged,” reported La Republique des Pyrenees
He went on: “She grabbed my left thigh, I panicked and fired a shot. She backed away growling, she went around me and bit my right calf. I fell, she was eating my leg.
“I reloaded my rifle and fired.” Mr Rives said he was left with no choice other than to shoot the bear. Jean-Luc Fernandez, president of a local hunting federation, said Rives killed the bear in self-defence.
“He fired. He should have let her do it? No, he saved his own skin. A bear is dead. A man is alive. It’s sad, but I prefer that to the other way around,” Mr Fernandez said. “The bear had dragged him for dozens of metres and he owed his survival to the presence of the volunteer firefighter.”
Judge Sun Yung Lazare said it was not a case of being “anti-bear or pro-bear” but that the trial was about the killing of a protected animal. Fifteen other hunters who participated in the hunt are also being prosecuted for differing offences, including hunting in a prohibited area, the Mont-Valier nature reserve, by the village of Seix.
“The boundary is poorly marked […] we never really know where we are,” said Jean-Claude E., one of the two leaders of the hunt, defending himself in court.
“Your obligation as a hunter is to know where you are hunting,” the prosecutor responded. Wildlife and environmental groups have also staged demonstrations outside the court claiming that Mr Rives should be punished for the killing.
“To what extent can one argue necessity, when one has committed a series of offences that led to the death of the bear Caramelles?,” asked Alain Reynes of the bear-preservation association Pays de l’ours.
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