Romanian police will investigate a possible poaching case involving an Austrian prince reported to have “wrongly” killed a massive male bear in a trophy hunt.
Romanian authorities say police will investigate a possible poaching case involving an Austrian prince who is reported to have “wrongly” killed a massive male bear in a trophy hunt on a visit to the country’s Carpathian Mountains in March
Austrian prince is investigated over claims he illegally shot dead the largest brown bear in Romania after paying £6,000 during a trophy hunt in the Carpathian Mountains
Prince Emanuel von und zu Liechtenstein was granted a four-day hunting permit in March in Romania s Covasna County
On March 13 he harvested a brown bear, for which he allegedly paid £6,000
The prince had been given special approval by the Romanian environment ministry to shoot a female brown bear - but he wrongly killed male bear
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Romania has the most brown bears in the European Union. But just how many bears it has depends on whom you ask, whether environmentalists, the government or the companies that make millions from trophy hunting.
In 2016, Romania banned the trophy hunting of large carnivores, such as bears and wolves. But under successive governments, exceptions have been granted for the sake of controlling the population. Under these guidelines, almost 1,400 bears have been killed by hunters to date, who are said to be willing to pay $15,000 for a trophy.
The official number of brown bears in Romania is over 6,000. But the government is not actually sure of the number, and environmental groups argue that it might be as low as 2,000. Hunting associations say the number could be as high as 10,000.
The appointment of Romania’s new environment minister, Barna Tanczos, has angered environmentalists due to past comments he made about the country becoming “the zoo of Europe”.
Campaigners and environmentalists were quick to recall Tanczos comments made in 2015 that Romania home to Europe’s biggest brown bear population should cull more than 4,000 bears.
“We cannot turn Romania into the zoo of Europe,” Tanczos said in a press conference in 2015. He also said that “The bear population is growing, it has already exceeded 10,000 specimens in Romania.”
Romania’s official bear population is 6,000 more than a third of Europe’s overall population but experts say that there are no accurate counts of the country’s bears.