Pyrenean brown bear
Ursus arctos
Seen by the oracleIts power
It spends the winter without eating or drinking for months, and wakes up without having lost its muscles.
Estimated wild population
83 bears (2023 count in the Pyrenees)
Trend
Increasing thanks to reintroduction
Range
Pyrenees, France / Spain
Main threat
Conflicts with livestock farmers, road collisions, fragmentation of mountain habitat
Meet it
It really exists. It is waiting for you at the Parc Animalier d’Auvergne.
The Pyrenean brown bear is one of the most iconic and most threatened large mammals in France. It eats almost anything, depending on the season: berries, roots, dead animals, fish and honey. Every autumn, it eats huge amounts of food to build up the fat it needs for its winter sleep. In the 1990s, the Pyrenees population fell to just 5 bears, with only one breeding male, “Papillon”, before reintroduction programmes brought in bears from Slovenia starting in 1996. The 2023 count found 83 bears. It has been listed as Critically Endangered in France since 2017 and is monitored by the French Biodiversity Agency (OFB).
What the Park does
Reintroduction programme since 1996 (bears from Slovenia), monitoring by the OFB, legal protection in France and Spain