Well, they seem to be active this fall, our teddies...

http://www.expressen.se/nyheter/1.883604/bjornens-dalig...-blev-deras-raddning

It was a big one, 250 kilos, and it only had one K-9 left that "probably saved their lives". This bear seems to have been a well-fed one so Sweden is apparently a little unusual now, statistically, for these recent attacks.

Personally, I think this naive predator-loving politics we have here now will blow up in peoples faces in 5-10 years, I mean, there was a reason our ancestors hunted them down a hundred years ago.

Well maybe the only reason for it attacking humans was the fact that it had problems with feeding naturally if the teeth were missing. Waht do you do in shuch cases. I could understand something about a video of the attack being taken and that the huntsrs were reported to the police. It's a luck if they have a video of it. Waht would someone do without one if attacked to prove that it was the bear that started it all.

quote:

I could understand something about a video of the attack being taken and that the huntsrs were reported to the police.

Shooting a protected aminal here in Sweden automatically gets you reported to the police for investigation. I beleive these two is not under any criminal investigation since the situation was pretty clear directly.

Does 'protected also mean that they're not hunted in any way?

quote:

Originally posted by Friedrich:
Does 'protected also mean that they're not hunted in any way?

Well, "protected" was maybe the wrong word, should have been "controlled" maybe. Here in Sweden the big predators are being re-introduced by parliament decision (to many peoples despair) and we have something called "protection hunting" which basically means that the goverment annually decides on a quota for several regions, for example my region "Dalarna" in the middle of Sweden had a quota of 31 bears which was reached in record time four weeks. Once that quota has been met the only way you can legally shoot a bear is in self defence and I beleive this case was ruled just that more or less on the spot.

There has been a lot of TV debates and news paper articles here the last weeks about "the growing bear problem" with a lot of voices calling for regular seasonal hunting of bears since it locally is VERY much of them. Hopefully we will get just that so we hunters can start controlling the population before it goes out of hand.

GE, we have the same problems here also.Each state controls things differently .New Jersey has given into the animal lovers so no black bear are hunted !Adjoining Pennsylvania harvests 3,000 per year .Here in New York we harvest a good number also. So far in the bow season two big ones I know of were 625 lbs and in my town in the Catskill Mountains 617.The one here was taken [where I used to hunt deer] over bait which is not legal here . So the hunter lost the bear and a fine and will have license revoked for a few years !!Another "hunter" took a 40 lb cub He has many charges against him !!!! Most black bear "attacks" are the bear going after food that campers have.

Mete,
as I understand it, you have a much bigger population of bears in the US, at least judging from various nature shows here on cable. We have so far yet to see a bear attack on an "innocent" person (hunters "put them self in positions for attacks" and "should blame them self" is the popular view) being attacked but I doubt it will be a very long time before that happens. Hopefully, then we will get a change of public debate tone.

Hunting by bait was legal here until early 2000 but was rejected for various smoke screen reasons, actual reason is that during the last year with bait hunting, a lot of "valuable research individuals" got shot.