ARCHIVED - Environmental agent detained as investigation into the death of wild bear in the Catalan Pyrenees continues
Initially a fight with another bear was believed to be the cause of death but it soon became obvious that the bear had been killed by human intervention
It is now seven months since the environmental protection service of the Valle de Arán, in the Catalan Pyrenees, reported the death of Cachou, a 6-year-old wild bear who had gained notoriety for his numerous attacks on horses, and the investigations into the circumstances surrounding his demise have now resulted in the arrest of one of the environmental guards.
Cachou's body was found in April at the bottom of a 40-metre precipice and the first reports suggested that he had fallen during a fight with another bear. However, there was a suspicion of foul play, not least due to the numerous enemies the bear had made while acquiring a taste for attacking horses: at one point in September 2019 he was responsible for at least five attacks on grazing mares and foals in just a fortnight, and locals were demanding that he somehow be removed.
But this posed a tricky problem for the local authorities in Arán, which belongs to the Piros Life project to protect wild bears in the Pyrenees, and after the regional government of Catalunya debated the best course of action it was decided to impregnate the remains of dead horses with a fungicide which would cause Cachou indigestion, eventually leading him to give up horse meat. It was soon after this initiative that the animal was found dead, leading ecologists to conclude that he had been poisoned by someone with less patience who had taken matters into their own hands.
But even the ecologists have been stunned by the news that the judge investigating the affair has ordered the detention of one of the environmental guards in Arán (and a member of the "Bear Brigade"), and Joan Vázquez of the Ipcena conservation institute describes it as being "like a Guardia Civil robbing the Banco de España".
The judicial investigation continues in secrecy, the first time in Spanish legal history that such procedures have been adopted in the case of the death of a bear.
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