Baloo the bear is alive and well and living in the Pyrenees…..probably

You remember Baloo, famed Disney buffoon and hero of the Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling?

The Pyrenees are one of the last strongholds of the European brown bear in southern Europe. There are 22 of them at the last count and one of them is called in french, “Balou”, after the Kipling character. More of him later…

Brown bears originated in China around 600,000 years ago but only turned up in our mountains around 250,000 years ago. Every ice age the Bering Strait between Siberia and Alaska freezes and the sea level drops, allowing any adventurous bruin to simply amble across. The North American grizzly is the same species (Ursus arctos). So Balou and Yogi Bear are one and the same.

Strangely, Hollywood would have us believe that grizzlies are huge blood-crazed monsters which live on tourist sandwiches, deftly extracting sleeping bags complete with contents from their tents. I say “strangely” because their European cousins bottle and head off into the sunset at the slightest whiff of a human. I also have a BBC video, shot in Alaska, where David Attenborough calmly talks to camera while Yogi tears past him only to flop into the river after a lunchtime salmon. Surely some mistake.....

Here, tourist offices offer little cards advising hikers what to do on meeting a bear. Their hearing and sense of smell are spot-on but the sight’s not so good. You’re supposed to speak to bruin so that he knows that you’re there. When he rears up his hind legs, it’s to take a better look at you and have a good sniff. If bruin doesn’t like the smell of you, stand aside. Don't block his escape route or he may blunder into you by mistake on his way to the big adios.

It’s best not to get between baby bear and his mum. She won’t have a sense of humour.

In the Pyrenees the bear population steadily fell during the last century due to persecution. Our last native one, Canelle, was run over and killed three years ago. Our remaining 22 are re-introduced from Slovenia. Each one arrives in secret, outnumbered a hundredfold by a gendarmes escort. This re-introduction programme is controversial.

The national government says that bears are a native French species so there should be some. They’re doing the same for wolves and lynx. Some local communities are favourable and some not.

Many farmers are against the re-introduction, blaming bears for killing livestock. Bears are identified as the culprit in around 1% of the 50,000 sheep casualties. The rest die of natural causes, fall off cliffs or are preyed on by feral dogs.

Some also say that bears are intruders on man's territory and do not belong in the Pyrenees.The earliest human traces are cave paintings from 30,000 years ago, about 220,000 after bears arrived.

Then there are the hunters who are not supposed to run shoots where bears are present. The management team track the animals by radio and warn a hunting association when a bear is present in the locality. This voluntary cooperation has worked well until this year when Ariège hunters refused to continue. So the Préfet, the local representative of the national government, stopped the hunts altogether.

Last weekend, 7,000 hunters turned out to demonstrate on the streets of Foix, claiming that the Pyrenees had never been wild. Odd that the Neolithic cave paintings don’t show many motorways or housing estates.

Since the programme began, three introduced bears have been shot by “mistake”. This may be true since this number is dwarfed by the horses, farm livestock, dogs and cats slaughtered in error. On average French hunters shoot dead 33 of their own colleagues each year. It’s a privilege to see the mighty hand of evolution at work in this way.

Predation by bears in Ariège is half its normal level this year, prompting rumours that they’ve been mysteriously done to death in contract killings worthy of the mafia. It's more likely that they've had an easy year with unusually mild weather and so didn't need the extra mutton.

Bears put on fat during summer and autumn then spend the winter in hibernation. Largely nocturnal, they can cover 30km in a night, foraging for berries, grubs, vegetation and smaller animals.

Then there’s Balou. He likes.......wait for it.......honey. There’s none of the Winnie the Pooh, head stuck in the jar, nonsense with him. The Pyrenean flowers provide beekeepers with exquisite finely-scented honey. Oblivious to the clouds of pissed-off bees, Balou just pushes over the hives and helps himself.

He mostly lives in the Orlu valley in upper Ariège but he excelled himself in early 2009. In spring, a young bear’s thoughts turn to......nookie. He covered the 80km to Rennes les Bains in the neighbouring department of Aude in just three nights. Sadly, his quest was in vain since there are so few bears that it’s hard to meet another.

He gave up after two weeks and went home in disgust all the way back to Orlu. I can understand; it's like returning empty-handed from a young farmers' dance. I can only marvel at his powers of navigation, though.