UNVEILING THE ISSUE OF BEAR POACHING IN BULGARIA: AN INTERVIEW WITH VLADIMIR TODOROV
Featured image: Vladimir Todorov, private archive
The brown bear is one of the most 'popular' wild animals. This large carnivore is well-known to most of us since childhood, being a protagonist in fairy tales and cartoons. However, real-life conditions are far from fairy tales for these wild species. It is estimated that hundreds of bears are poached every year all over Europe. Reasons for it vary, including human-wildlife conflicts and trophy poaching. Such cases also happen in Stara Planina mountain, one of the field sites of the Nature FIRST project. Join us for an interview with Vladimir Todorov, Assistant at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, a consortium member of Nature FIRST, to learn more about the current state of bear poaching in Bulgaria and the measures taken to stop it.
Stara Planina mountain – an outstanding area for improving biodiversity monitoring and conservation
Stara Planina mountain is home of the Central Balkan National park, one of the three national parks in Bulgaria. It has outstanding biodiversity levels thanks to some of the largest uninterrupted areas of beech forest in Europe and a unique combination of three climatic zones. Stara Planina mountain falls into mountain, temperate-continental and transitional-continental climatic regions.
The Central Balkan National Park spans the entire length of Bulgaria dividing it into two parts. The Nature FIRST project focuses both on the national park and the buffer zones around it.
"The idea to include them was to record the effects of different management practices: from very strict restrictions on human activity (total ban for hunting and extraction) inside the national park boundaries, to hunting enterprises with intensive supplementary feeding and hunting, and national forest enterprises with less intensive hunting and stronger control on human activity," explains Vladimir.
Currently, Stara Planina mountain faces several challenges. Firstly, it is the loss of habitats due to the changes in rural activities: the decreasing number of farms combined with more intensive agricultural practices. Secondly, as farmers face the problem of attacks on livestock, human-wildlife conflicts have become a social problem. Thirdly, poaching also appears to be a burning issue.
Types of bear poaching
There are various types of poaching based on the motivation of a perpetrator:
Trophy poaching: hunters seek to obtain a trophy of Europe’s largest predator, even illegally.
Conflict bear poaching: as a result of human-wildlife conflicts, people resort to hunting. "In rural Bulgaria, people really do not trust the institutions, which often leads to unregulated lethal control of problematic and non-problematic (bear) individuals," explains Vladimir.
Accidental poaching: these cases happen relatively rarely when a hunter may mistake a bear for a wild boar. "Of course, this also has a lot to do with the lack of good control regarding issuing of hunting licences and the lack of good education for hunters," says Vladimir.
Organ trafficking: "There are rumours of organised trade of expensive bear organs (particularly gallbladder) for Chinese and other markets for the purposes of traditional medicine. Old Bulgarian beliefs also highly praise bear lard creams and ointments which may further increase the demand for bear hunting. Such rumors are difficult to confirm but are far from impossible," adds Vladimir.
However, the main reason for all types of poaching is the lack of law enforcement. Vladimir explains that the legislation that protects wildlife and prohibits poaching, logging and other types of environmental crimes are in place. "But there is a strong lack of control and enforcement of it, leading to a feeling of lawlessness and lack of consequences for the criminals," explains Vladimir. "We try to at least somewhat prevent and mediate conflicts, and minimise the incidence of poaching and lethal retaliation from locals in response to conflicts."
The current state of fighting bear poaching
Bulgaria is taking active measures in fighting wildlife crime. A few months ago, a dedicated bureau for wildlife crime was created in the police. It focuses primarily on such cases as poaching, poisoning of animals and other types of environmental crime. Such efforts are combined with the daily work of rangers, park officials, forest workers, NGOs and scientists.
"I install free electric fences for people that have recently suffered from a human-wildlife conflict and I also relocate problematic (bear) individuals to remote areas which helps prevent locals from “taking matters into their own hands”," shares Vladimir.
Featured image: Vladimir Todorov, private archive
The major challenge in fighting bear poaching in Bulgaria is the lack of cooperation between citizens and governmental institutions. Vladimir explains that there have been numerous cases when a wild animal destroyed people's property but they wouldn't report it to the officials. "In the village of Anton, over the course of 1-2 months 4 beekeepers lost in total more than 30 apiaries. None of these people officially reported the damage to any institution, even though they are entitled to reimbursement from the government. I had to very insistently ask them to do that so they can receive their reimbursement," says Vladimir.
The main reason is the low level of public trust in governmental institutions, especially in rural areas. "Although this is partially justified, the unfortunate truth is that it leads to a vicious cycle of lacking communication and cooperation between locals and institutions," adds Vladimir.
Picture of a bear taken by Vladimir during one of his working days in Stara Planina
First results of the Nature FIRST project in the area
In these challenging conditions, the Nature FIRST tools have already shown first positive results. Recently, in social media and TV broadcasts, multiple videos of a bear roaming around the city of Gabrovo appeared. The bear kept entering the city on a daily or weekly basis for over two months. People were taking photos and videos but no one called the police or other governmental institutions. "Even if institutions were functioning well, you can easily see that the problem also comes from the people who do not report conflicts. Without an official report, the institutions cannot do their job," says Vladimir.
However, when the official search in the city eventually started, the Cluey app provided assistance. "While we were looking for the bear within the city, we all had Cluey turned on so we could mark any signs of presence in real-time. In that particular case, this was not the decisive factor that helped, but it definitely showed us how it can be useful in similar situations where real-time observations with GPS coordinates are important," explains Vladimir.
This real-time pin-pointing has a lot of potential in informing Natura 2000 management practices, according to Vladimir. It can be used for marking wildlife populations or mapping conflict hotspots. And if observations of illegal or questionable human activity are collected on a regular basis in a particular area, it can be prioritised by rangers in order to prevent poaching or other illegal activity.
Finally, the experience of fighting bear poaching can help in investigating other wildlife crimes in Bulgaria. "Fighting poaching is to a large extent a forensics job: we collect tracks, traces of activity, try to figure out where this person entered the protected area, where he left, is there camera footage and so on," says Vladimir. This can be also applied to investigating the poisoning of wildlife, especially of protected birds, or illegal logging. "As for poisoning, the accumulation of data on poison left in specific areas of the forest during certain seasons can be a crucial tool in narrowing down the list of suspects and collecting evidence," concludes Vladimir.
If you would like to stay up to date with news on bear poaching in Bulgaria, sign up for our newsletter.
