Bulgaria sets first annual bear hunting quota, please send message
PHOTO | Wikimedia Commons
Please send message to associated address protesting Bulgaria’s bear hunt; you may use the sample letter but modify and shorten if possible. All email addresses valid, use separately or copy/paste as a group. Thank you.
From AFP | Yahoo News
Bulgaria’s environment ministry set an annual brown bear hunting quota for the first time on Thursday, following a decades-long ban on killing the protected animals.
The ministry said in a statement it would allow the hunting of 17 animals this year, with dispensations distributed among seven bear-populated regions.
The quota was determined based on three recent tallies of the bear population, which found that some 540 to 560 bears roam Bulgaria’s mountains.
Seven of the dispensations were granted to the Smolyan region, in the southern Rhodope mountains, where a brown bear killed a villager in July 2010, the first such accident in decades.
The killing and a number of attacks on flocks and beehives in the region sparked angry cries for a cull and eventually prompted parliament in end-2010 to open between three and eight percent of the bear population for hunting.
Environmentalists immediately slammed the changes as catering to the interests of hunting lobbies, under the guise of attempting to curb poaching.
“We had to obey the law,” ministry expert Ruslan Serbezov told AFP, noting however that the government had set the quota at the lowest three-percent end of the scale, while Bulgaria’s bear habitats were by no means overpopulated.
Bears are a protected species in Bulgaria and their killing was strictly banned for more than 20 years, except in cases of accidents and with special permits distributed on a case-by-case basis.
The move comes as the European Commission launched legal action against Sweden on Thursday for allowing hunters to shoot 20 wolves this year even though the species is threatened with extinction.
The European Union’s executive arm raised concerns about Sweden’s wolf policy, including the licensed hunting of a protected species and the “arbitrary ceiling” of 210 wolves that was set for the animal’s population.
Swedish Environment Minister Andreas Carlgren said Sweden alone could decide whether or not to allow the hunt.
Related | Brown Bears Socializing, National Geographic
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WHERE TO SEND YOUR LETTERS
Dr. Miroslav Hristoforov Naydenov, Minister of Agriculture and Food
Ministry of Environment and Water
Executive Environment Agency
Neli Mutafova, Ministry of Environment and Water
ADDRESSES AS A GROUP
minister@mzh.government.bg , rdd@mzh.government.bg , contact@moew.government.bg , ncesd@nfp-bg.eionet.eu.int , n.mutafova@moew.government.bg
SUBJECT
Hunting Bear Quota, Stop the Bear Hunt
SAMPLE LETTER
To Whom It Concerns,
Hunting is inherently cruel, yet this hunt is particularly savage, employing cheap baiting tactics to attract the bear, a decidedly unmerited and cruel strategy to lure this creature to his death. Although the desire to protect personal property is understandable, doing so via death and destruction by hunting aficionados reveals more of a selfish maneuver than a selfless endeavor. Indeed, manipulating the situation by labeling the bear as deadly destroys any recourse on behalf of the bear or diplomatic decisions. Furthermore, it is important that you are aware that the brown or grizzly bear, ursos arctos, is considered a threatened species in many locales, and is also listed by the UN Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) as at risk or endangered depending upon location, and that hunting them could be considered an international crime .
Therefore, I respectfully request that, based on the established brutality involved as well as the potentiality for facilitation of illegal animal commerce and trade, you please vacate any licenses provided and dispense with any further hunting operation against the one, or any other, brown bear and instead seek non-lethal interventions as necessary. Please leave your reputation free of such brutal, inequitable hunting enterprises, and do not allow economical benefits, hunting sympathizers, and distorted accusations to dominate over ethics and judicious resolutions.
I know your time is limited, and I thank you for your attention to this urgent concern.
Your name
Country
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Our Compass 
Please stop this disgrace, only you can show the world that Bulgaria knows better than to use bears for dancing or for shooting!
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please stop killing animals,
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please sop killing animals
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Do not alowe killing animals!—You could make a diference and save lifes!! Every problem has a solution and it”s not killing! Do not forget, assisting in crime makes you a criminal…assisting in murder makes you a killer!!
STOP THIS GENOCID!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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the only acceptable quota is ZERO!!!!
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WHY DOES MAN FEEL THE SICK NEED TO ABUSE, TORTURE AND MURDER ALL OF OUR WORLDS ANIMALS. WE DONT EVEN DO THIS TO MURDERERS AND CHILD RAPISTS.
HUMANS ?? I THINK NOT. MORE AND MORE I SEE NO HUMANITY. THE BAD ARE OUTWEIGHING THE GOOD.
TO ANIMAL ABUSERS AND MURDERERS..AN EYE FOR AN EYE..LET THE PUNISHMENT FIT THE CRIME.
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outrageous! Have you read the “mission” of the minister? To preserve the enviroment! Strange way to preserve…I agree with Karen: ZERO is the only acceptable quota!
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Please stop killing animals for pleasure!!!
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Surely the best way to eliminate animal cruelty is to insist that governments fly their very own “cultural flag” that unequivocally identifies a positive & humane animal ethos with the most intelligent and virtuous characteristics of their state. In short, get it firmly inculcated into the minds of all people that cruelty is a cultural tendency that can be completely reversed for their own patriotic betterment as well as for the welfare of our animal cousins. New “flags” for a new consciousness – to make people happier and also prouder of themselves. Cruelty and fear go hand in hand, let’s break through this desperate illusion and replace it with the simple truths of real life, in real terms anyone can understand.
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