Yahoo News 27 Jan 11;
SOFIA (AFP) – Bulgaria's environment ministry set an annual brown bear hunting quota for the first time on Thursday, following a decades-long ban on killing the protected animals.
The ministry said in a statement it would allow the hunting of 17 animals this year, with dispensations distributed among seven bear-populated regions.
The quota was determined based on three recent tallies of the bear population, which found that some 540 to 560 bears roam Bulgaria's mountains.
Seven of the dispensations were granted to the Smolyan region, in the southern Rhodope mountains, where a brown bear killed a villager in July 2010, the first such accident in decades.
The killing and a number of attacks on flocks and beehives in the region sparked angry cries for a cull and eventually prompted parliament in end-2010 to open between three and eight percent of the bear population for hunting.
Environmentalists immediately slammed the changes as catering to the interests of hunting lobbies, under the guise of attempting to curb poaching.
"We had to obey the law," ministry expert Ruslan Serbezov told AFP, noting however that the government had set the quota at the lowest three-percent end of the scale, while Bulgaria's bear habitats were by no means overpopulated.
Bears are a protected species in Bulgaria and their killing was strictly banned for more than 20 years, except in cases of accidents and with special permits distributed on a case-by-case basis.
The move comes as the European Commission launched legal action against Sweden on Thursday for allowing hunters to shoot 20 wolves this year even though the species is threatened with extinction.
The European Union's executive arm raised concerns about Sweden's wolf policy, including the licensed hunting of a protected species and the "arbitrary ceiling" of 210 wolves that was set for the animal's population.
Swedish Environment Minister Andreas Carlgren said Sweden alone could decide whether or not to allow the hunt.
