The Secretary of State for the Environment, Federico Ramos, today visited the actions carried out within the framework of the different projects launched for the conservation of the Cantabrian bear by the Brown Bear Foundation (FOP), with the support of the Biodiversity Foundation of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and the Environment. Ramos was accompanied during the visit by the general director of Environmental Quality and Assessment and the Natural Environment, Guillermina Yanguas, by the director of the Biodiversity Foundation, Sonia Castañeda, and by the director of the Brown Bear Foundation (FOP), Guillermo Palomero.

In recent years, the Ministry, through the Biodiversity Foundation, has co-financed several projects that seek the conservation of the Cantabrian bear, in which the FOP has invested more than 2 million euros.

These projects aim to contribute to the elimination of bear death caused by the human factor, favor the beekeeping sector by reducing  conflict with the bear through the protection of its facilities, creating and maintaining employment in rural areas, contributing to the monitoring of the Cantabrian bear population, and promoting information on the species and environmental education, training and nature tourism activities. In addition, they mean the creation of 20 jobs in rural areas. For the execution of the actions to search for illegal traps and to monitor the bear population, there is the collaboration and involvement of the hunters, with whom different agreements have been signed, and which are added to those signed with the Royal Spanish Hunting Federation to cover the actions of compatibility of hunting activity and the conservation of the bear.

After 20 years of collaboration, the bear population has reached more than 200 specimens with a favorable scenario, when in 1994 the bear population in the Cantabrian Mountains was going through a critical phase in which there were only about 70. Thanks to these projects, this species has become a local economic engine and one of the most outstanding tourism elements in the area.

During the day, Ramos also visited the Babia Biosphere Reserve in León, the plantations in Corredor de Leitariegos (Cangas del Narcea) and the Interpopulation Corridor (Sena-Barrios de Luna, León) to see the permeability problems of the main barrier between the two subpopulations of the bear: the AP-66, where the LIFE Corredores has been developed, also supported by the Biodiversity Foundation and the LIFE Bear Defragmentation is currently being executed.