THE might of the French State was deployed yesterday to find and save a bear cub after hunters killed its mother, the last native she-bear in the Pyrenees.

As gendarmes and wildlife officials sealed off a wide zone in the Aspe Valley near the Spanish border in the western Pyrenees, President Chirac joined the outcry over the death of Cannelle (Cinnamon), the 15-year-old mother shot at close range when she apparently charged a group of boar-hunters.

“The animal’s death is a great loss for biodiversity,” M Chirac told the weekly Cabinet meeting. Serge Lepeltier, the Environment Minister, called the killing an “ecological disaster”.

The ten-month-old cub ran from its mother’s side when she was shot and disappeared into the undergrowth.

Philippe Grégoire, the Prefect (governor) of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques département, ordered extraordinary measures to ensure the cub’s survival in the wild, including a ban on hunting and dog-walking in the Aspe area.

“The big problem is the destiny of the cub. It is our duty to guarantee his survival,” M Gregoire said. “The cub is not tiny. There is abundant food where he lives. He will not be captured and must be left alone. If he is not disturbed, he has a serious chance of survival.”

Cannelle was the last surviving female bear of indigenous stock. There are believed to be two indigenous males among the 15 to 18 other bears in the French Pyrenees.

These are mainly animals or their descendants imported from Slovenia and Croatia in the 1990s in a campaign to restore what used to be a thriving brown bear population in the mountains.

An investigating judge has opened an inquiry to determine possible criminal liability for the shooting, which was the most serious recent incident in the running war between wildlife defenders and France’s powerful hunting lobby.

In 1997 two cubs survived after hunters killed Melba, another indigenous bear.

Cannelle’s cub, whose sex is not known, is believed to have been sired by one of the Slovenian bears.

Bernard Place, president of the local hunting association, said that the killing was “an irredeemable ecological waste” but that the hunter had acted purely in self-defence, fearing for his life. “He did everything humanly possible to avoid the tragedy at risk to his life,” he said.

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