Episode 159: Europe’s Big Three – Wolves, Bears, Lynx. Part 2: The Brown Bear’s Rocky Return to the Pyrenees

Summary

Rewilding Earth Podcast Episode 159

Europe’s Big Three – Wolves, Bears, Lynx

Part 2: The Brown Bear’s Rocky Return to the Pyrenees

Release Date: October 31, 2025
Host: Jack Humphrey
Special Contributor: Julius Purcell
Guests/Voices: Steve Cracknell, Adrien Desrusseaux, Magali Bro, Alain Rennes, Amandine

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Episode Overview

This episode delves into the tumultuous journey of the brown bear’s return to the French Pyrenees, tracing the dramatic comeback of reintroduced Slovenian bears and the resulting culture war that pits traditional livestock farmers against modern conservationists. Julius Purcell travels through the Pyrenean landscape to uncover the social, political, and ecological complexities surrounding the rewilding of bears, exposing the deep tensions between historical tradition and contemporary environmental priorities.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Loss and Return of the Brown Bear

• Extinction of Native Bears:
  The native Pyrenean brown bear, Ursus arctus pyreneucus, was declared extinct in France in 2004 when the last known female, Canel, was killed by a hunter.

  “The last female bear... was killed by a hunter on November 1, 2004, named Canel. She was the last of her kind in France.” (Narrator, 04:07)

• Reintroduction Efforts:
  Bear reintroduction began years prior, with Slovenian bears released in 1996 and 1997. The population grew from just 3 to over 100 bears within 28 years.

  “In the last 28 years, that population has grown from three to over 100.” (Narrator, 04:35)

• Pyros the Patriarch:
  Pyros, a male Slovenian bear released in 1997, sired the majority of the current bear population, raising concerns over inbreeding.

  “There’s been one dominant bear, Pyros... he mated with his daughters and his granddaughters... 75% of Pyrenean bears and more were directly related to him.” (Steve Cracknell, 17:44)

Cultural and Historical Roots of Resistance

• Fierce Local Opposition:
  Deep-rooted historical mistrust towards state intervention and large predators is especially potent in the Ariege region, fueled by local traditions of rebellion and insurrection against French authority.

  “That’s part of the Aries tradition of rebellion against the state. And that tradition is still well known in the area.” (Steve Cracknell, 10:10)

• Dramatic Protests:
  Farmers and shepherds express outrage over livestock losses linked (sometimes tenuously) to bears.

  “Videos from the time show shepherds flinging buckets of sheep’s blood at public buildings.” (Julius Purcell, 09:39)

  Extreme rhetoric and masked threats have surfaced, such as vows to illegally hunt bears.

  “Shepherds, hikers, hunters. We have decided to resume hunting bears in the Ariege.” (Narrator, 11:02)

State and European Union Policy

• Legal Framework & Funding:
  The EU Habitats Directive gave brown bears the highest protected status. Conservation subsidies are conditional:

  “The deal is: Restore nature, get money for rural communities.” (Narrator, 08:33)

  Subsidies support not only bear protection but also rural shepherding jobs, protection measures, and infrastructure.

  “Shepherding communities have actually been saved by state and EU nature subsidies... 600 assistants in the summer months.” (Alain Rennes, 14:43)

• Controversy Over Compensation & Subsidies:
  Some local shepherds, like Magali Bro, say compensation processes are slow and difficult, and that state protection measures (like guard dogs and fences) aren’t always effective in the harsh Pyrenean environment.

  “Magaly is explaining that it has to be decided by a commission... if an attack can be attributed to a bear.” (Narrator, 13:23)

  Nevertheless, attacks have not increased in step with bear numbers:

  “There are over 100 bears. And there’s three times less damage than in 2019. Why? Because the state has funded protection measures.” (Alain Rennes, 15:29)

Media Representation and Public Perception

• Media Bias:
  National and international media often favor sensational stories of conflict rather than quieter tales of coexistence.

  “Angry shepherds throwing sheep’s blood is a better story than people just quietly working out ways of sharing their landscape with wild animals.” (Narrator, 16:19)

  This has distorted public understanding of the nuanced situation, painting only a “sterile binary” of pro- or anti-bear stances.

• Generational Shifts in Attitude:
  Many younger locals, like Amandine, express acceptance and even pride in the presence of bears:

  “For me, bears are a part of the mountains. I can’t imagine mountains without bears.” (Amandine, 27:48)

  Public support for bears remains strong nationwide, even if local support is more tenuous.

Ecological Implications

• Ecology of Fear and Regeneration:
  Bears benefit ecosystems by spreading seeds and influencing herbivore behavior, which curtails overgrazing and allows forest regeneration.

  “They eat seeds... so they will distribute them somewhere else. They will have seeds in their fur which will drop elsewhere.” (Steve Cracknell, 17:09)

• Genetic Bottleneck:
  The limited genetic pool among bears threatens long-term viability—the only solution is further bear releases, yet these are blocked by political and social stalemate.

  “How do you increase the genetic viability? Well, you release more bears, but if you release more bears, you anger the farmers.” (Julius Purcell, 18:19)

• European Variation:
  While the Pyrenean bears face conflict and genetic peril, Cantabrian brown bears (in northern Spain) are thriving—highlighting how tolerance and coexistence are influenced by cultural memory and regional specifics.

  “Bear tolerance seems to be a phenomenon specific to the Cantabrian region... Pyrenean livestock farmers had got used to living without bears for generations.” (Narrator, 29:18)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Resistance to Bears:
  “The more they oppose bears, the more financial help they get. There’s jobs for shepherds, a lot of money... and the damage has decreased. Today, I have to say, cohabitation with bears is a minor problem.”
  – Alain Rennes, [14:43]

• On Bear Attacks and Media:
  “The media rarely mentions subsidies... Angry shepherds throwing sheep’s blood is a better story than people just quietly working out ways of sharing their landscape with wild animals.”
  – Narrator, [16:19]

• On Generational Attitude:
  “For me, bears are a part of the mountains. I can’t imagine mountains without bears.”
  – Amandine, [27:48]

• On Symbolism in Festivals:
  “Order versus disorder, humans versus bears. This old festival reflects some old binaries. On the other hand... it does show a cultural baseline for bears exists here.”
  – Narrator, [22:16]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [00:57] – The bear’s extinction and reintroduction in the Pyrenees
• [03:29] – Paleolithic culture and ancestral relationship to bears
• [04:39] – Farmer resistance and the culture war
• [08:54] – Livestock attacks and historical sources of opposition
• [12:10] – A shepherd’s view: grief, protection, compensation mechanisms
• [14:43] – Alain Rennes: State and EU subsidies, the real impact on livelihoods
• [15:29] – Do more bears mean more attacks? Analysis of recent data
• [17:31] – Bear numbers vs. genetic diversity: Pyros and the inbreeding problem
• [18:19] – Politics stalls further reintroduction; the genetic bottleneck
• [20:02] – The Bear Festival: Tradition, symbolism, and shifting identities
• [27:39] – Younger generation perspective: Bears as an integral part of the landscape
• [28:14] – The success of Cantabrian bears: cultural baselines and tolerance

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Conclusion

This episode skillfully threads the story of the brown bear’s return through complex ecological, cultural, and political terrain. The Pyrenean bear saga exposes both the promise and the pitfalls of Europe’s rewilding vision—where genuine ecological success is precariously balanced against generational memory, rural livelihoods, and the ever-shifting winds of regional and continental politics. While the future for bears in the Pyrenees hangs in the balance, there are tentative signs of hope—especially among younger generations and in regions like Cantabria, where coexistence has become embedded in local story and identity.

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Transcript

[Narrator]

So many remarkable things had to come together to allow this bear to return. Working together for three decades, most of the states of the European Union managed to see past the ancestral hostility to bears and restore them to these and other European landscapes. But the emergence of a new nature, hostile politics, is now putting that remarkable achievement under threat, not just in France, but across Europe.

[Jack Humphrey]

You're listening to the Rewilding Earth podcast. I'm your host, Jack Humphrey. In the Pyrenees, the native brown bear went extinct in 2004, when the last female canal was killed by a hunter. A reintroduced population of Slovenian bears has grown from just three to over a hundred, marking a dramatic, if controversial, comeback for one of Europe's most iconic animals. This success, however, has ignited a fierce culture war, pitting traditional livestock farmers against modern conservationists. This conflict, rooted in deep historical rebellion, has created a political stalemate that now prevents the release of new bears, trapping the population in a dangerous genetic bottleneck. In this second installment of his special Wolf Bear Link series for the Rewilding Earth podcast, Julius Purcell journeys into the heart of this conflict. He explores how the fight over the perineum bear exposes the limits of European conservation, where deep rooted traditions clash with the politics of rewilding, and where the future of this magnificent animal hangs in a delicate balance.

[Narrator]

I'm 6,000ft up in the Pyrenees, the mountains that separate France from Spain. Together with a small group of French nature lovers, I'm with Adrian Desrusseaux, who works for Pays de l', Orce, an organization dedicated to protecting bears on the French side of these mountains. It's early May. It's been a really wet spring with late snowfalls. The beech and hazel forests up here are a vivid lime green. Adrien is wielding a machete to clear the path. Adrian's saying that it's the first time anyone's been along here since last fall. Any humans that is. Across these mountains, the brown bears emerged from their dens just a few weeks ago. Adrian's just shown us tufts of hair on the trees, and we've also seen other signs of their recent magnificent presence here. The story of bears and humans in the Pyrenees is a very old one. In a cave not far from here are drawings of a bear made during the Upper Paleolithic, 14,000 years ago.

[Steve Cracknell]

The most noticeable thing is the hump on its shoulders, which is very characteristic of bears.

[Narrator]

Steve Cracknell is a British author who spent many years writing about bears in the Pyrenees. This ancient drawing that Steve's describing connects us to a very contemporary drama that's playing out in these mountains.

[Steve Cracknell]

It's not just a drawing of a bear. It appears to be the killing of a bear.

[Julius Purcell]

The last female bear of the subspecies.

[Narrator]

Ursus arctus pyreneucus, a descendant of this.

[Julius Purcell]

Bear depicted in the drawing, was killed.

[Narrator]

By a hunter on November 1, 2004, named Canel. She was the last of her kind in France. The death of Canel was not, however, the death of bears in the Pyrenees, because some years before Canaille was killed, bears from another subspecies had been introduced into the mountains from Eastern Europe. In the last 28 years, that population has grown from three to over 100.

[Julius Purcell]

But the presence of these bears has been bitterly resisted by livestock farmers, triggering a dramatic culture war across these mountains.

[Narrator]

In this episode, I'll be looking at.

[Julius Purcell]

How the Pyrenean culture war is preventing attempts to stabilize and genetically diversify the new bear population. How this exposes the limitations of European.

[Narrator]

Nature restoration when it comes into conflict with traditions and a deep rooted cultural hostility to wildness. This is the funeral mass in 1996.

[Julius Purcell]

Of Francois Mitterrand, a fighter as a.

[Narrator]

Young man against Nazi occupation and later.

[Julius Purcell]

A staunch believer in the European Union. Mitterrand was France's longest serving president. Conservationists remember him for two reasons.

[Narrator]

Firstly, for eating a dish of endangered.

[Julius Purcell]

Songbirds just before he died. And secondly, rather more positively, all through his presidency, Mitterrand vowed to restore France's population of bears.

[Narrator]

A few months after his death, his wish was fulfilled. Now, at this moment in 1996, canel, the native Pyrenean bear, was still roaming the mountains. As explained earlier, ecologists knew that this native subspecies had fallen to such low numbers that it had basically become unviable. So they recommended a Slovenian subspecies, a.

[Julius Purcell]

Very close match, be introduced into the mountains here. In May 1996, two female bears were transferred from Slovenia to the French Pyrenees. A male Slovenian bear was transferred to.

[Narrator]

France a year later. His name was Piros.

[Julius Purcell]

The sound you're hearing is Piros. Release in the spring of 1997.

[Narrator]

The.

[Julius Purcell]

Release box opens and Piros barrels out. He's off before the waiting cameras and merges with the forest.

[Narrator]

As we saw with the recolonisation of Germany by wolves from the last episode, the story of the restoration of bears in the French Pyrenees and the story of their future is intertwined with wider European politics. Let's go back to the year 1992. For the political leaders gathered to see the torch lit at the Olympics in Barcelona that summer, there's a general feeling of hope. The western states that make up the European Community are about to rename themselves as the European Union. And with the Soviet menace over, its leaders can turn to new challenges to take measures against climate change and the destruction of nature. 1992 is the year that Europe passed the European Union's Habitats Directive. Europe's record on nature is complicated. Many conservationists argue that the European Union's agricultural policies has contributed to the decline of biodiversity in general. Bugs, birds and wildflowers. Even so, the Habitats Directive remains the legal basis on which the European Union, working with its member states, have enabled the dramatic return of lynxes, bears and wolves. The Habitats Directive placed the brown bear in the species grouping with the highest protection. All very well in theory, but the European Union has always had to strike a delicate balance between European and local sensibilities. The stick of legal action with the carrot of subsidies. The deal is Restore nature, get money for rural communities. As we examined in the last episode on wolves, the EU's rural interventions are not always welcome on the ground.

[Julius Purcell]

In the French Pyrenees, bears have met furious resistance from livestock farmers. In 2017, when the Slovenian bear population had reached nearly 50 individuals, anti bear protests erupted. Steve Cracknell explains what happened.

[Steve Cracknell]

A bear attacked a flock in High Ariege in Montrouge. It killed one, the rest panicked and they tried to escape down a slope which was far too steep for them, and they tumbled to their deaths. And 209 sheep died. And you can imagine they had about 800 sheep, lost 200 in one Searle event. They were very angry.

[Julius Purcell]

Videos from the time show shepherds flinging buckets of sheep's blood at public buildings. Enough of bangers and placards and slogans. The man's shouting, it's time to try other methods. These feelings have deep historical roots in the central Pyrenees, which is called the Ariege.

[Steve Cracknell]

The Ariege was obviously very isolated from the rest of France.

[Julius Purcell]

In the early 1800s, the French state passed laws restricting access of local shepherds to the forest.

[Steve Cracknell]

Very important to them. And so you have around 1828, what was called La Guerre des Demoiselles, where there were insurrections which included attacking any symbol of authority. And there were a few deaths as well. Until the army was brought in, the shepherds had the advantage of knowing the land very well, so they could have do their attack and disappear into the nature and nobody would be able to capture them. So that's part of the Aries tradition of rebellion against the state. And that tradition is still well known in the area.

[Alain Rennes]

Stop.

[Narrator]

During the 2017 protests, a sensational video was released to social media, which shows a group of men masked in balaclavas, wielding rifles in booming tones. These Ariejois shepherds are threatening the same French state on which they're fought. Forefathers had declared war 200 years ago. Shepherds, hikers, hunters. We have decided to resume hunting bears in the Ariege. Now, as brown bears have the status of highly protected under the habitat's directive, it's illegal to harm them under any circumstances. But since the death of Canel, several bears have been killed. In 2020, on the Spanish side of the border, Cashew was allegedly poisoned. Arrests have been made for Cashew's death and a trial is pending. That same year, Sarous was shot by a Spanish hunter and Gribouille by a French hunter.

[Julius Purcell]

Most herders, of course, don't harbour such violent views. Shepherd Margallis Bro, for example. It's a crisp November morning in the foothills of the Pyrenees, not far from Carcassonne. There's breakfast laid out on the tailgate of Margulies truck. Around us, the piney limestone ridges plunge into valleys filled with vines and cypress trees. Margulies flock winters here. Under compensation rules set by the European Union, shepherds must protect their flocks with temporary fences and guard dogs. If they. If these measures are in place, the state will compensate, theoretically, any loss from bears. Margalese guard dogs are Pyrenean mountain dogs, known locally as patu. They're powerful animals, standing 31 inches high. But even a big patu can be intimidated by a bear, especially when it's attacking. And shepherds frequently complain that the fences often don't work either for compensation. Magaly is explaining that it has to be decided by a commission. They ascertain if an attack can be attributed to a bear. Magaly has direct experience of this, because last July, high up in the Pyrenean summer pasture to the south of here, a bear attacked.

[Margallis Bro]

Those lambs used to come into the cabin. I was their mother. And then to find them killed. It's hard. We love our animals.

[Narrator]

Ecologists are fully aware of the inconvenience of bears to livestock farmers. But they believe that if there is willingness by herders to take advantage of the preventative measures on offer, problems can be resolved and bears and flocks can cohabit. But there's a lot of misinformation during the rounds among rural communities and livestock farmers. It's often heard that Slovenian bears are more aggressive than the native Pyrenean bears, or that they're sort of carnivores in disguise. And don't really subsist on seeds and berries. Neither of these assertions are true. Alain Rennes is president of the organization Pays de Lours, dedicated to defending bears in the Pyrenees. He accuses the livestock farming lobbying of distorting the narrative in other ways too.

[Alain Rennes]

Livestock farming in the Pyrenees is not threatened by bears. The reverse is true. Shepherding communities have actually been saved by state and EU nature subsidies since the turn of the century. Thanks to this money, which is tied to restoring bear numbers, shepherds can employ 600 assistants in the summer months. But the more they oppose bears, the more financial help they get. There's jobs for shepherds, a lot of money to finance cabins, and the damage has decreased. Today, I have to say, cohabitation with bears is a minor problem.

[Julius Purcell]

But the more bears there are, surely the more attacks on livestock.

[Narrator]

Alain Ren insists that this isn't true.

[Alain Rennes]

Greater bear numbers do not have to lead to more attacks. The maximum damage in the Pyrenees was in 2019. There were 52 bears left. Today there are over 100 bears. And there's three times less damage than in 2019. Why? Because the state has funded protection measures. These measures are very effective.

[Narrator]

A 2023 report commissioned by the French government compared the impact of bears in the French Pyrenees with that of bear populations in Spain and Italy. The political and social tension in the French Pyrenees was much higher than those other areas. And those other areas also suffered fewer bear attacks on livestock compared to France. So there are rural communities that manage to cohabit with bears. The problem is that the media rarely show this. Angry shepherds throwing sheep's blood is a better story than people just quietly working out ways of sharing their landscape with wild animals. And the media rarely mentions subsidies. A principal beneficiary of state and EU subsidies related to bears in the French Pyrenees is the livestock sector itself. This works out to about 12 million euros a year. A fair chunk of that money funds shepherd assistant jobs. And let's look at the significant ecological benefits that these plantigrades offer these mountains. Firstly, the ecology of fear, in which the presence of bears disperses herbivores such as deer through the landscape, preventing overgrazing and allowing vegetation to regenerate.

[Steve Cracknell]

Steve Cracknell the other effect of bears is of course, that they eat seeds under good walkers, so they will distribute them somewhere else. They will have seeds in their fur which will drop elsewhere. So they do have an ecological effect. It's just that at present, with this moral numbers that we have, that effect is so far limited.

[Narrator]

But it's not Just the numbers of.

[Julius Purcell]

Bears across the mountain chain. The big worry is the genetic variation within that population. Remember Pyros, the sound of whose release in 1997 we heard earlier?

[Steve Cracknell]

There's been one dominant bear, Pyros, over a period of 25 years, until he died at a quite respectable age of nearly 30. He mated with his daughters and his granddaughters. And to the extent that 75% of Pyrenean bears and more were directly related to him, there's far too much inbreeding, and that is a threat to to the long term survival of bears in the Pyrenees.

[Julius Purcell]

How do you increase the genetic viability? Well, you release more bears, but if you release more bears, you anger the farmers, especially in the Ariege. The French state is required by law to protect and expand its bear population. The Pyrenean bear issue sometimes reaches top tier politics. In March 2018, there was a landmark ruling that found that the French state was neglecting its duty to bears. In a gesture to show that France took it seriously, French President Emmanuel Macron agreed to the release of two more Slovenian bears that year. But the optimism didn't last. In 2021, the French government was about to unveil funding plans for new measures to protect livestock, in parallel, it was hoped, with new bear releases. At the last minute, regional politicians pulled the plug on the plan. So at present, in 2025, there are no plans for future bear releases. I asked for an interview with the French Office of Biodiversity, but they refused. Pro bear organizations fear that lobbying pressure by farmers has forced France into a situation that satisfies nobody. Bears hanging on in these mountains, genetically impoverished and with no prospect of reaching the numbers needed for a cascade of ecological renewal.

[Narrator]

It's February in the eastern Pyrenees. Every Sunday of this month, a different town in this region hosts its version of the Fete de l', Ors, the Festival of the Bear. This Sunday, it's the turn of Sanorens de Cerdans. The tiny French town is packed, swelled by Catalan and Spanish speakers who have just come from over the border. According to the story, the bear stirs from his winter sleep on February 2nd, which is, of course, Groundhog Day in the United States. Now, this is no coincidence. February 2nd is the Christian feast of Candle Mass, when the child Jesus is presented in the temple. Falling exactly 40 days after Christmas, it gave rise to a slew of popular festivals across Europe in which awakening animals symbolize the stirrings of springtime and desire. We're being chased by the bear, they're saying. They seem pretty happy about it. The bear at St. Laurence is always played by a man in his twenties from the village. The bear head and the skin that he wears is realistic and fierce. There's nothing Disney ish about this. The bear runs amok in the crowd. He attacks women he's captured. There's this kind of harangue and the crowd boo. And then he escapes again and is recaptured. These women have just come up to me and rubbed my face with handfuls of glitter. Dressed in tiny little tutus, they're the figuretas, little figs. Andrea has just come over the border from Spain. It's about what she calls the vital force of the bear. Like many other popular European festivals, transgression is given a free reign for one afternoon, and then order returns. That's the moral. The bear of disorder can run amok for a while, but is always captured or killed.

[Julius Purcell]

Eventually. The reintroduced bear population of the Ariege.

[Narrator]

Is way to the west of here. Bears disappeared from this part of the eastern Pyrenees long ago. Some here today, like Thibault in his 30s, see the irony of this. To Thibault, bears belong in these mountains, and he'd be happy for them to return. Order versus disorder, humans versus bears. This old festival reflects some old binaries. On the other hand, as Steve Cracknell has argued, it does show a cultural baseline for bears exists here. So one day, perhaps, the festival can celebrate the bear as order, the natural order, and every bit as fierce and awesome and fun. That's amazing.

[Amandine]

Wow, more snow on there since yesterday.

[Narrator]

Is that possible? I don't know what the groundhog style predictions for the Pyrenees were. Back in February, snow lingered on the high peaks. And that's why it wasn't until May that Adrian of the organization Pays de l' Horse gave his go ahead for the first bear tracking trip of the year. The Pyrenean French village we set out from is called Melle. It's a consequential place in our story. The area has a strong livestock tradition, and it was here in Mel that the bear pyros that descendants of so many of the current Pyrenean bear population was released back in 1997. Bears are celebrated in the village's official signage, but on the approach road we see anti bear graffiti. Adrian is fed up with the way journalists come in, present the bear situation as this sterile binary, and then move on. The anti bears say, oh, it's not possible. We don't like bears here. And then we have an ecologist who comes along and says, oh, we love bears. Cohabitation is Hard in the Pyrenees between bears and people. Well, that's hardly news. Let's move beyond this, he's saying. Let's ask the fundamental what is a bear? What are the solutions to live with that bear? That's what we do. We'll tell you what a bear is and how to live with him. That's constructive. And so, after a discussion about whether Chaffinches can predict the weather, we head up to the high slopes, up incredibly steep paths. The zigzag of death, as Adrian reassuringly calls it. Far below us, the young river Garonne flows out of Spain in a roar of snowmelt. Now that we're high up in these beech woods, it's a relief, after all these arguments and statistics, to finally be in bear country. The tufts of hair that we find on the trees are collected and put into envelopes. They'll be sent to the labs for DNA testing so that the bear's movements can be tracked and better understood. And as I said at the beginning of the episode, we're the first people that have been along here since last fall. The camera trap has a video of an adult male bear that passed along this path to just a week ago. The gasp we all let out reflects, I think, a really basic emotion, that he was here, right here on this spot, as he rears up high on his back legs to scratch against the tree. We all sense his magnificence, the rightness of him being here. So many remarkable things had to come together to allow this bear to return. Working together for three decades, most of the states of the European Union managed to see past the ancestral hostility to bears and restore them to these and other European landscapes. But the emergence of a new nature, hostile politics, is now putting that remarkable achievement under threat. Not just in France, but across Europe, bears face culls as populist politics finds its voice. A cull of hundreds of bears, for example, has already been launched by Slovakia. At the same time, there are reasonable signs of hope. Polling across France shows pretty solid public support for the reintroduction of bears. Although this support drops within Pyrenean communities in it's still a majority view, which comes as a surprise to those who only see the lurid accounts in the media of shepherd bear culture wars.

[Amandine]

I learned a few things today, few things very interesting.

[Narrator]

And just as we saw in the episode on wolves in Germany, there have now been three decades of bear realities here on the France Spain border. Anyone born in the early 1990s or later has grown up knowing that bears now dwell in these forests.

[Amandine]

I am 32 years old.

[Narrator]

On the way down the mountain, I talked to Amandine, a young hospital psychologist who lives about 50 miles away.

[Amandine]

I came with my boyfriend. It was a gift for us from my family because we love hiking and animals. For me, bears are a part of the mountains. I can't imagine mountains without bears.

[Narrator]

At the beginning of this episode, I explained how the bear Canel, killed in 2004, was the last reproductive female of the subspecies Ursus arctus pyreneocus. But she was only the last in France. Although the Pyrenees end at the Atlantic, its geology continues a chain of mountains that forms the green, rocky brow of Spain's northern seaboard. These are known as the Cantabrian Mountains. And here's the twist amid the noise of the bear debate in the Pyrenees. In the Cantabrian mountains just next door, which has a strong dairy and livestock tradition, Ursus arctus pyreneicus has survived, and its population is doing pretty well. Now we've heard how the bears of the Pyrenees, who have inflamed passions and obsessed the media for two decades, now number 100. In a 2023 census which surveyed a swathe of northern Spain, the Cantabrian bear population was estimated to be over 300. So are the Spanish more tolerant of bears? That's a bit too simplistic, because on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees, there's often the same hostility to bears as on the French side. Bear tolerance seems to be a phenomenon specific to the Cantabrian region. Now, coexistence there is not perfect, and there's some social tension, but media coverage in the Cantabrian region. He's often sympathetic to bears, and Pirineicus bears are seen as a plus for local tourism. These are young musicians from the village of Cangas de Narcea, deep in the range of the Cantabrian bear. This is a region with farming traditions every bit as strong as the Pyrenees. As we see time and again, toleration of wildness seems to come down to memory. Baselines. Pyrenean livestock farmers had got used to living without bears for generations. Although Cantabrian bears fell to a critical low 40 years ago, they never entirely went away. So do local people see them as an inconvenience? Of course they do. But they also see them as a part of life and the landscape. Restoring wildness is about biology and ecology, but it's also about the story that we tell ourselves. Wildness as disorder, or wildness as the highest order in an otherwise degraded world. Perhaps as Amandine and her generation grow older, they can start reframing that story in the Pyrenees, where the first brown bears arrived long before we did, a quarter and of a million years ago.

[Jack Humphrey]

Thanks for listening. Make sure you don't miss the next episode in the Wolf Bear Link series. Subscribe to the Rewilding Institute's weekly digest and this [e-mail] subscribe Please consider making a [e-mail] Donate if you're a fan of the podcast and be sure to share this episode with friends. Thanks.