The bear territory reaffirms its commitment to coexistence with the species at a meeting of mayors in Somiedo

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We want bears, but away from the villages. This is the message reiterated today by the six municipalities with the highest density of bears in the region of Asturias, meeting with the Principado de Asturias and the Brown Bear Foundation (FOP) in the constitution of the Asturian Coordination Committee of the LIFE Human Bear COEX project. The initiative, of which nine town councils from Asturias and Castilla y León are partners, seeks to mitigate possible conflicts with the species and ensure that not a single bear in the Cantabrian Mountains becomes habituated to humans.

During the meeting of the project coordination committee in Asturias, the details of the action plan to prevent the presence of bears in the vicinity of the villages were agreed, which will be carried out by two prevention teams managed by the local councils themselves.

Among the tasks of the teams, made up of local workers, will be to maintain security perimeters in the villages and along roads by clearing vegetation; clearing illegal accumulations of rubbish that could attract bears; and planting fruit trees away from the villages. Throughout the project area, in Asturias and the northwest of León, 50,000 native fruit trees will be planted in 250 groves to generate more food resources for bears in the bush and discourage them from seeking easy food in human settlements.

Goal: no habituated bears in the Cantabrian mountains

The goal of the project, coordinated by the FOP and funded by the European Union’s LIFE programme, is that there will not be a single bear habituated to people or human food sources, such as rubbish.

As defined in the Protocol for Intervention with Bears in the Cantabrian Mountains (approved in 2019 by the State Commission for Natural Heritage and Biodiversity), ‘a habituated bear is a bear that recurrently accesses inhabited areas in search of accessible trophic resources (food), such as vegetable gardens or rubbish containers, and does not respond by fleeing in the presence of humans’.

A young bear looks for garbage inside a bin in Asturias. Credit: FOP

Within the framework of the project, a specialised team from the FOP will respond immediately to problematic situations: for example, by protecting chicken coops, fruit trees or other assets that attract plantigrades. In this sense, the project complements and strengthens the actions being developed by the Principado’s Regional Ministry of Rural Affairs and Agricultural Policy to ensure coexistence with the species in Asturias. The capture and radio-tracking of 10 bears is foreseen, prioritising those specimens that look for easy food around human environments, and bear-proof containers and rubbish bins will also be installed.

Coordinated by the Brown Bear Foundation, the nine municipalities with the highest density of bears in Spain (Somiedo, Belmonte de Miranda, Proaza, Cangas del Narcea, Degaña and Ibias, in Asturias, and Villablino, Páramo del Sil and Palacios del Sil in León) are partners of LIFE Coexistence between Humans and Bears. The Junta de Castilla y León and the regional government of Asturias support it as partners, and the Fundación Patrimonio Natural de Castilla y León and the Fundación Oso de Asturias participate as collaborators.

More than 100,000 trees have been planted in northwestern Spain to secure the brown bear’s future food supply

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The Brown Bear Foundation (FOP) continues to work within the framework of the LIFE Bears with Future project to adapt the species’ habitat to climate change. Local work crews will finish the second planting campaign of the project in the coming days, with more than 100,000 native trees – mostly fruit bearing trees- planted since these actions began in 2022, 46,800 during this campaign.

The plantations cover 115 hectares so far and have been carried out in public lands in the municipalities of Palacios del Sil, Páramo del Sil and Villablino (León) and also on private properties in these municipalities after establishing land stewardship agreements with the landowners.

The aim is to create stands of native fruit-producing trees, “supermarkets” for the bear that will reinforce its diet in scenarios of climate change. The characteristics of the chosen species and the location of plantation plots have been taken into account, with some of them located at an altitude of more than 1,000 metres.

The work of this second planting campaign began in October, after hiring 10 unemployed residents of the municipalities. Between October and early April, the crews planted 13,000 wild cherry trees (Prunus avium), 3,400 alder buckthorn (Frangula alnus), 600 wild apple trees and 2,500 grafted apple trees of different varieties (Malus sp.), 9,300 whitebeam trees (Sorbus aria), 5,000 rowan trees (Sorbus aucuparia) and 13,000 silver birch trees (Betula alba) in various stands. In addition, 2,930 chestnut trees (Castanea sativa) have also been planted in this period – a species that, in the new climate scenarios, is expected to thrive in new areas and at higher altitudes in the Cantabrian Mountains.

Trabajos de reforestación durante el LIFE Osos con Futuro

The FOP LIFE project technicians collected seeds in ecologically similar areas to produce the seedlings in the Central Forest Nursery of the Junta de Castilla y León. The chestnut trees were produced in the La Mata forest nursery, belonging to the Principality of Asturias, some of them with grafts of traditional varieties.

These actions benefit the brown bear and biodiversity as a whole by improving the environmental quality of bear habitats, making them more resilient to climate change. The involvement of the municipalities and the creation of local employment is also key to the project.

The LIFE Bears with Future Project, co-financed by the European Union’s LIFE Programme, will be carried out until 2025. It is coordinated by the Brown Bear Foundation in partnership with the Biodiversity Foundation (Ministry for Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge), and the Natural heritage Foundation of the Castilla y León regional government. Both the Government of Asturias and Tierra Pura Foundation collaborate in the project.