Former minister to submit bill for quota-based hunting of bears in Romania

Former environment minister Tanczos Barna, presently a senator in the Romanian Parliament, is set to submit a bill aimed at regulating the control of the brown bear population, including the reintroduction of hunting based on a quota.

Barna greenlit some bear hunting quotas as his last act as minister, planning for 480 bears to be eliminated. The new minister of environment, Mircea Fechet, said he would issue a new order regarding the prevention and intervention quotas for the brown bear population, which will target 220 animals.

UDMR senator Tanczos Barna, now part of the opposition, wants the bill to have the support of all parliamentary groups. The legislation is set to be submitted next week in Parliament after obtaining over 100 signatures from all parties.

"We have started collecting signatures for the bill in which we propose the introduction of strict measures for controlling the brown bear population in Romania based on studies conducted by research institutes and universities in Romania. We also have some data from the genetic evaluation study of the brown bear population in Romania. [...] Other parties also see how serious this problem is, and representatives of other parties see the need for a science-based but firm intervention to protect human life and to have scientific control based on studies over the brown bear population in Romania," said Tanczos Barna, cited by HotNews.

Several bears were hunted already “because they were aggressive,” Barna says, according to regulations put in place by UDMR during its time in government. The package of laws and regulations, however, is incomplete, according to the senator, requiring immediate intervention and hunting quotas, among other things. He argues that “thousands of bear specimens live in overpopulated habitats,” endangering human lives.

The new bill faces strong opposition from environmental NGOs like Agent Green and the Coalition for Animal Rights in Romania. They are concerned about the persecution of the brown bear species, which has reached unprecedented levels, and they directly accuse Tanczos Barna of the situation created during his tenure as a senator and former minister of the environment.

The two ministers prior to Barna, social democrat Grațiela Gavrilescu and liberal Costel Alexe, took significant steps to implement a plan for the conservation of bears, but Tanczos Barna completely blocked it during his term as minister, between December 2020 and June 2023, the NGOs argue.