Vidzeme bear permit follows losses to hives and livestock

The Nature Conservation Agency has issued a permit for the municipalities of Valmiera, Cēsis and Valka to remove a bear that damaged several farms in Vidzeme this summer and had lost its natural fear of people, senior communications specialist Baiba Ralle said.

Bears are not listed as game animals, so action against an individual animal is allowed only as a tightly controlled exception, to protect public safety or prevent serious damage. Ralle said a lethal permit is granted only after a case-by-case review, for example when an animal has lost its fear of people, looks for food in yards, causes material losses at several households at once, keeps returning to inhabited areas and creates a real risk to health and safety, and owners have already taken every recommended preventive step.

A permit does not mean the animal is killed at once. Its conditions first require deliberate scaring and disturbance with noise and light, using firecrackers and signal pistols, or hunting weapons used only to cause physical discomfort without life-threatening injuries, disproportionate suffering or mutilation. The agency hopes this will move the persistent bear away from inhabited places and restore its fear of people. When a bear disturbs people, the situation should be filmed and the footage later sent to the agency.

Landowners must also take preventive steps. As far as the farm allows, attractants should be removed from the yard or protected: closed waste and compost containers, poultry kept in a closed shed at night, and food and animal feed stored where bears cannot reach them.

Only if that targeted disturbance fails and the animal continues to threaten residents may it be killed, under supervision of the responsible services and the conditions set in the decision, by people holding valid hunting certificates and following hunting rules.

The agency says the volume of bear damage is growing. Both compensation applications and reports of smaller losses are increasing. Compensation is paid only when the damage exceeds the minimum monthly wage, so not everyone applies, and the real number of conflicts is higher than the official statistics.

In 2022 there were 13 applications for damage to apiaries and livestock, all of them for apiaries: 12 compensations were granted and one was refused. In 2023 the agency received 16 applications, granted compensation in 13 cases and refused three. Payments were mostly for apiaries, apart from one livestock case. In 2024 it received eight applications for damage to apiaries, paid six and rejected two.

Last year it received 25 applications, 23 for apiaries and two for livestock. Compensation for apiaries was paid in 18 cases and five applications were rejected. For livestock, compensation was paid in one case; in the other, the damage was found not to have been caused by a bear. Through October this year, seven applications have been registered, six for apiaries and one for livestock, and compensation has been granted for the livestock case. One apiary compensation has been granted; the other apiary applications are still under review because the data arrived in the first half of October.

Kristaps Ezītis, deputy head for communications at the Cēsis municipality's Communication and Client Service Department, told LETA this summer that the municipality knew of separate bear sightings in the area. Client service centres and the municipal police had also received separate resident calls about possible bear damage. The information is passed to the municipal police, which inspects the place and its surroundings, assesses the situation and checks residents' safety. It is not always possible to confirm immediately that a bear caused the damage. Guidance prepared by the agency on what to do when meeting a bear in an urban area has been published on the websites of the Cēsis municipality and its union administrations.

The report also noted that this summer residents of several towns, including Jēkabpils, Smiltene and Riga, had seen bears in urban areas.