Eventually the beat took them back into a dark thicket and I lost sight. I had never seen anything like this before. After asking a prominent biologist who has studied bears and wolves in this area for many years, he too had never seen a fox and bear interact in such a way.
Our best guess was that the fox had a den in the area and simply wanted the bear gone. Over the next few days three more bears graced me with their presence. The mountains of Asturias are neither the remote Alaskan arctic nor the backcountry of Yellowstone. In these wild mountains, with the howl of the wolf and track of bear, the pulse of the country is thrilling. Brown bear populations are growing steadily, much of that rise due to the efforts of conservation organizations such as Fundacion Oso Pardo FOP.
Their work to reforest land, reduce poaching, as well as to facilitate compensation for farmers who have suffered damages caused by wolves and bears has greatly helped the population. I asked Guillermo Palomero, president of FOP, what would be his suggestion to outsiders considering coming to Spain to see the bear. It is important to choose the right dates; bears are more visible in April and May, or between August and September. Bears mean different things to different cultures. As I drove out of Asturias, along those same narrow winding roads I could not help but think that this place can serve as a lesson for conservation elsewhere.
If the communities in this pastoral corner of Europe can live with a large bears wandering their woods, then so can others. People and large carnivores can co-exist, but we do need to make room for them and hold their presence in high regard. Search Search. The brown bear ursos arctos is the same species, wherever it's found in the world.
Local populations grow in a huge variety of sizes due to environmental factors, and are given unique common names as a result. We found them. They spoke volumes of just how deeply bears are embedded in the local culture, and how much would be lost if they disappeared. Our final day found us heading east towards Fuentes Carrionas Natural Park. A rugged track led us bumping slowly up into the park until, emerging through the oak woods, we found ourselves on a sunlit central plateau with a panorama of muscular hillsides sloping away in all directions: a perfect arena for the red deer rut, which was now in full swing.
As the hoarse bellows came at us in surround-sound, our binoculars picked out the russet coats of the antlered combatants staking their territorial claims. As each stopped to bellow, a puff of exhalation caught the low late-afternoon sun, the sound following a split-second later. Now he stepped back and ushered us forward. Through the eyepiece, I zoned in on a gleaming promontory of rock that rose like the prow of a ship between the steep sides of a gorge.
On top, sprawled in sunlit grey and ochre, was — unmistakably — a wolf. As I watched, its ears pricked up. Had it seen us? Another appeared from the left. The first sprang up and the two greeted one another in that familiar canine frenzy of sniffing and tail-wagging. Since my trip, of course, Covid has brought international ecotourism to a halt — in Spain as everywhere else. But while tour operators have been anxiously awaiting the lifting of travel bans, the teams on the ground have not stood still.
Nunca digas nunca. Flight time is from around 90 minutes. Steppes Travel recommends this and will collect clients from the ferry terminal. Getting around: The Cantabrian range spans much of north-western Spain, from the Pyrenees in the east to Galicia in the far west. Organised tours concentrate on these locations, following the local knowledge of experienced guides. Independent travellers can explore the region by vehicle. Brown bears have been a protected species in Spain since In an effort to consolidate the bear population in the Pyrenees between France and Spain, brown bears from Slovenia have been introduced over the past two decades.
Spain is home to the most varied wildlife in all of Europe, but unfortunately a number of species — including the Brown Bear — are at risk of extinction. Conservationists believe that the Eastern population of bears is struggling due to factors such as inbreeding and a lack of food on that side of the mountains, and so hopes to merge both populations naturally.
They are also planting fruit trees and situating bee-hives on the Eastern side of the mountains to assist the bear population there. With the efforts of researchers and conservation groups , there is at least hope now that these magnificent creatures can not just survive but thrive in their mountain retreats in the North of Spain. Spain is home to the largest number of animals in the whole of Europe, including snakes , wolves, ibex, flamingo, lynx, deer, ibex, eagles and many more.
I was walking through an olive grove in the foothills near Rosas in North Eastern Spain this morning at about 7. I am pretty sure that I saw a bear in the brush. Is this possible?
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