2008 Woodie Awards
Un-bear-able environmental crisis
Kathryn Treadway
Issue date: 11/11/04 Section: World
Bernard Place, president of the departmental hunter's federation, also condemned the killing saying, "The hunters had been warned there was a bear in the area. There should not have been any hunt. I am dumbstruck." An investigation by the environmental ministry is underway to determine how the hunters were allowed to organize a shoot in the area. France's Association for the Protection of Wild Animals said it would ask for charges against the killer and the head of the hunting club who organized the shoot.
The bear's death was cited generally as an "environmental catastrophe" by the French government. President Jacques Chirac said, "The disappearance of a species is always a serious loss for biodiversity." Environmental Minister, Serge Lepeltier, stated, "It is an ecological catastrophe because this was the last female bear of the Pyrenean line."
This is how the brown bear dies, with a bang and a whimper. No longer shall France be able to ask, "Brown bear, Brown bear, what do you see?" But in Scandinavia and North America the brown bear lives on beyond the extinction of the Pyrenees species. The grizzly bear and the Kodiak bear are the North American cousins of the Pyrenees brown bear, and here in North America they are found in national parks.
Sources: Tiscali Reference Encyclopedia, Guardian Unlimited, Telegraph Group Limited
The bear's death was cited generally as an "environmental catastrophe" by the French government. President Jacques Chirac said, "The disappearance of a species is always a serious loss for biodiversity." Environmental Minister, Serge Lepeltier, stated, "It is an ecological catastrophe because this was the last female bear of the Pyrenean line."
This is how the brown bear dies, with a bang and a whimper. No longer shall France be able to ask, "Brown bear, Brown bear, what do you see?" But in Scandinavia and North America the brown bear lives on beyond the extinction of the Pyrenees species. The grizzly bear and the Kodiak bear are the North American cousins of the Pyrenees brown bear, and here in North America they are found in national parks.
Sources: Tiscali Reference Encyclopedia, Guardian Unlimited, Telegraph Group Limited