HEBE: Bears, where are you?

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: Where are you bears?

HEBE: Where are you bears?

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: Bears, where are you?

HEBE: Bears, where are you?

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: Deep in the forests of Transylvania in

Romania, Europe's largest population of brown bears still

roam freely. But what does that mean when a busy city like

Brașov sits right on their doorstep and when a family hike

in the Transylvanian forests becomes a search for bears? I'm

Rosie Holdsworth and you're listening to Wild Tales,

European Brown Bears.

HEBE: Goodness me, mummy

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: Goodness me, Hebe.

So we're mixing things up today and doing things a little bit

differently because I'm interrupting my lovely holiday

in Transylvania in Romania to tell you a little bit about what

we're up to today. So I am with my lovely husband Rob and our

little girl Hebe. We are hiking in the Tampa Hills above Brașov

which is a really beautiful medieval town.

About three hours north of Bucharest, the capital, and we

are going to see if we can see some wildlife and hopefully spot

some signs of bears.

It's very beautiful November day, the sun's shining, the

leaves are crunching

HEBE: The bears of scared off by our bells.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: And the bears are scared off by our bells.

That's my toddler on my back. So you can hear the bells that

we've brought with us and that's because bears don't like to be

surprised.

Nobody likes to be surprised but bears particularly dislike being

surprised. So we're staying safe by making lots of noise. Which

is easy when you've got a toddler and they like to sing as

you walk. But we'll keep looking. But when we were out

the other day we did see some bear tracks which were very

fresh from that morning. So we're hopeful that before we

have to go home we might see bears.

So what exactly are my family and I walking amongst? Csaba

Domokos is a biologist with a Romanian conservation charity

called Milvus Group and he spent more than 20 years working with

brown bears here in Transylvania. So he knows their

habits very well.

CSABA DOMOKOS: Brown bears in Europe are basically the largest

land predators. We call them large carnivores but they are in

fact omnivores.

It's a brown bear. But the name can be somewhat misleading

because brown bears' color can actually range from a bright

yellow to a shiny black. For example, here in Romania, among

the rural population, there are all kinds of myths about black

bears and all these other species.

And this is mainly because of this very wide range of colors

they can have. And also the very wide range of body sizes, just

as with people.

So we have like smaller bears and then we have... true

behemoths as well.

The more you go towards the north, their bodies get usually

bigger and bigger. But let's say a very big bear in Romania would

be something up to 400 kilograms or something like this. And that

animal is already very, very big.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: To give you some context, that's the

equivalent weight of five grown men.

CSABA DOMOKOS: They are incredibly strong animals, so

you cannot compare them really to anything else in nature, I

think.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: That includes their rather unusual shape.

CSABA DOMOKOS: They do have a shoulder hump and it's basically

made up mostly from muscle. They use these huge muscles, for

example, to turn over rocks to look for ants underneath them.

So bears have five fingers basically on each pole and each

of the fingers ends in a huge claw which then they use for

digging up stuff or they use them as precision tools for

example for opening clams and feeding on clams.

They are big, powerful animals. People see them usually and they

have this strange type of body and then they somehow assume

that it's a slow animal somehow, but they are incredibly fast.

They can easily reach up to 50 kilometers per hour. They can

basically outrun a racehorse. So it's really an unbelievable

animal.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: So with all of the incredible wildlife that

Transylvania has to offer, what is it about bears particularly

that has got me in bear fever and scuttling about in the

woods, desperate to see any signs of them? I mean, I've

always loved bears. They're one of my favourite animals.

It kind of goes back to childhood. We used to watch The

Jungle Book on repeat whenever we went to my granny and

grandpa's house. And I think Baloo the bear just was like the

character that kind of really chimed with me the most.

They're such big, charismatic, fascinating creatures. The fact

that they're still here and they're still doing their bear

thing minding their own business, bumbling about in the

woods.

It's just amazing when you think about the change that's happened

in some of these habitats and the pressures that those animals

are under, in what is quite a small area. Romania is not a

massive country but they're still here. They've carved out

their niche and they're being really really successful. So, I

would absolutely love to see them whilst we're here.

Which does make you wonder just how many bears are actually out

here.

CSABA DOMOKOS: The exact size of the Romanian bear population is

really a subject of hot debates for many years now. The official

numbers put this population around 10,000 individuals, but

actually a little bit above this. It's probably the biggest

national population of brown bears in Europe, actually.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: A massive population for a country of this

size. Romania was kind of Eastern Europe's last stronghold

for the brown bears. Due to conservation efforts and

protection, they've been able to spread back through the

Carpathians, out into other countries, and this is kind of

where the recovery of the European brown bear population

has started from.

But we're probably only about an hour out of the city centre of

Brașov, and there are bears here, so that's absolutely

incredible.

CSABA DOMOKOS: So in Romania, in reality, bears share their

habitats with people. People from Western Europe tend to

think of Romania as somehow like the land of wilderness, which in

a way it is.

Every single individual bear needs an area usually of several

hundred square kilometers. And if you think about it like that,

then there is actually not a lot of space left wild in Romania.

So, basically every bear here will eventually come into

contact with people and most of the individuals of the Romanian

bear population spend at least a few good months of their lives

each year close to cities and to villages.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: What are they for?

HEBE: Bears scared off by our bears, mommy.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: That's right, the bears are scared off by our

bears. We keep ourselves safe.

We're doing all the right things, making plenty of noise,

but it does raise another question. What are the bears

actually eating out here?

CSABA DOMOKOS: They are really carnivores that have adapted to

some degree to also eating plants.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: Which is good news for me and my family.

CSABA DOMOKOS: They eat a lot of plants, but they also eat a lot

of insects, and then they also actively hunt, but they also

scavenge. Both animals that died of natural causes and the prey

of other carnivore species, because they share their

habitats with grey wolves and with Eurasian lynx. So whenever

they can, they will actually try and steal the prey of this other

species as well.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: When you're at the top of the food chain, you

can do that.

CSABA DOMOKOS: One of the most important diet items for brown

bears are ants, in a somewhat surprising way. And they eat

basically anthills with ants eggs and larvae and with dirt.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: But there's one thing that bears seem to

love more than anything else.

CSABA DOMOKOS: They actually do like honey a lot and they will

try to raid both wild bees and beekeeper's property as well and

they do raid them quite often.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: It's not just about having a sweet tooth.

CSABA DOMOKOS: Honey is extremely nutritious. It's

really high on calories and bears are basically machines

looking for a very high calorie intake, especially when they

start preparing for their winter sleep, they have to accumulate a

huge amount of fat to be able to live from it throughout the

winter.

There are some studies suggesting that they can consume

up to 20,000 calories every single day. And honey is really,

really high on calories, so whenever they can, they will

actually go for it.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: So right now, these bears are eating

constantly, preparing for what comes next.

So we're deep into autumn, it's November, and the bears are

definitely starting to think about hibernating. So far it's

been pretty mild, there's not been much frost here, a lot of

the bears are still active, and they've kind of, every year

they've got to do this balancing act really, between staying out

of hibernation long enough to put on enough fat stores to see

them through the winter, versus staying out too long and kind of

burning those fat stores whilst they search for more food.

CSABA DOMOKOS: This is a really neat adaptation actually to the

scarcity of food. It's simply a way of preserving energy of time

when food is really scarce. So what they have to do is that

they accumulate a huge amount of fat before that. In Romania,

usually they go into this winter sleep somewhere around December.

In this area where I work, in Romania's Eastern Carpathians,

they dig dens out for themselves. We don't have to

imagine it like a big cave or anything. It's basically the

size of the bear. So it normally has a small entrance, a really

small one. Sometimes it's surprising how a big animal can

squeeze through something like that. Then usually a small

corridor leading to a chamber. And the smaller it is, actually

the better it is because it can keep it partially warm

throughout the winter.

A bear will simply curl up inside one of these dens and

then spend several months there without eating or drinking or

moving actually. This is also a period when they are most

exposed to disturbance by people and this can be actually quite

dangerous for people and for bears alike.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: A bear suddenly woken from its winter

torpor is likely to feel threatened and defend itself.

Which is why stumbling across a hibernating bear is something

you really want to avoid.

But as the days begin to lengthen and the first signs of

spring appear...

CSABA DOMOKOS: The first to emerge are basically males and

then females that are single or females that are accompanied by

cubs of last year, so two-year-old cubs. And then the

last ones to come out, are the females with newborn cubs,

because this is one of the other very neat adaptations of bears,

that they actually give birth to their cubs during this winter

sleep time.

This is also why it's so important that they put on a lot

of fat before that, because then they will not feed or drink.

Pregnant females, they will give birth and they will nurture

their cubs entirely from the fat reserve they have accumulated

before that.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: As a mum myself, that completely blows my

mind. Breastfeeding humans need about 500 extra calories a day.

I ate an enormous amount of cake on maternity leave. But mother

bears survive the whole winter on stored fat reserves, and

often there's more than one newborn cub to feed.

CSABA DOMOKOS: So a brown bear would normally have somewhere

around two or three cubs actually. In exceptional cases

there have been also five. Usually less than 50% of those

cubs actually reach the age of one year.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: Predators such as humans, wolves and even other

bears play a part in this.

CSABA DOMOKOS: Life is difficult in the forest.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: But today on our walk there are bears still

out there, eating, preparing and waiting for winter, which means

that there's still a chance my family and I might spot one or

two.

HEBE: Bears where are you?

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: Where are you bears?

HEBE: Where are you bears?

CSABA DOMOKOS: Because the bear population in Romania is so

large and also because they're quite close to some fairly big

kind of urban centres, there is quite a big issue with human

wildlife conflict in Romania. So the Romanian government is kind

of looking at that and looking at measures that can be put in

place to kind of keep people and keep the bears safe. Because

where those conflicts happen, obviously not only are people in

danger, but the bears are as well. And it kind of you need

public trust and public opinion on your side for conservation to

be successful.

When living together with bears, on one hand they do cause

damages to human property, they occasionally kill livestock,

they actively hunt sheep and cattle sometimes, and then they

also cause damages in agricultural crops, for example

in fruit trees.

So they really like these apples and pears and plums. But they

don't simply just eat the fruits, then they will also

break the trees while getting the fruit. Nowadays we have a

lot of corn all over in Romania, so they can cause extensive

damages in corn fields as well.

Probably the most sensitive issue regarding bears is that

they can also cause injuries to people and occasionally, sadly.

They can also kill people. These kind of incidents are quite

rare, even in Romania, I would say.

And they absolutely pale compared to any other cause of

human mortality. So I think we have somewhere around

20-something people killed in the last 20 years by bears. In

most cases, these attacks are not by accident. They have been

somehow provoked by people. So, we cannot somehow separate bears

from people or people from bears.

And then we somehow have to find a way to coexist with them. This

is, I think, possible. And the best proof for it is the fact

that we still have bears. I think that maintaining some kind

of social tolerance... Or social acceptance towards these animals

is really crucial for their long-term survival.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: And for Csaba, a biologist who works with large

carnivores, coexistence sometimes means getting

dangerously close.

CSABA DOMOKOS: I had a lot of very close encounters throughout

the years with bears and probably one of the most

dangerous thing that we occasionally have to do is to

free bears from this wire snare setup by poachers. Because these

are really uncontrolled situations, you cannot really

tell until it's too late how a bear is caught in those wire

snares. A lot of times they are physically hurting, and these

are really dangerous situations.

There have been a few cases when we approached these animals, you

know, they actually broke these wires that were holding them in

place.

We had cases when there was a mother caught in a snare and

there was its cub caught in another snare and I was in

between them and the mother broke the snare. And even in

this case you know she just ran away and even abandoned her cub.

This somehow for me this somehow conveys the message that in most

cases you are fine.

Brown bear attacks are not predatory attacks. They happen

out of self-defense. And this is actually why most of the people

will actually survive being attacked by a brown bear. Simply

because the bear is trying to eliminate the danger.

And when you are knocked down on the ground or something, after a

while, the bear will actually most of the time abandon the

person there and flee. So what it does from his perception is

that he's trying to eliminate that immediate threat.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: And if you were to cross paths with a brown

bear, what should you do?

CSABA DOMOKOS: If a bear is approaching you and it has

noticed you, then basically you have to look as unthreatening as

possible. So the first thing should be probably to make the

bear realise that you're a person. And you can talk to him,

not necessarily shouting. You can raise your and move around

your hands so that they actually realize that it's a person. And

most of the time, this would be more than enough to scare it

away.

If an attack happens, generally, you will end up on the floor and

you should lie on your belly and try to protect your neck, you

know, and try to protect your soft side.

And the most important thing probably actually is that you

should walk around with pepper spray, bear specific pepper

spray. These are highly effective. I can really affirm

that that they work.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: So in terms of keeping ourselves safe from

bears that's obviously you know we've come out into the woods

with our toddler. So that's obviously at the forefront of

our mind. So we're being mindful to kind of make lots of noise.

We've got our bells.

Hebe's great at singing songs and chit-chattering so we're not

going to surprise any bears. But we've also got bear spray with

us as well, should we be charged by a bear. Which we can use just

to give ourselves a little bit of space and breathing room.

CSABA DOMOKOS: I think it really teaches us somehow to walk

around, let's say, in a forest with really all your senses

tuned to the max. And really looking out for movements from

the corner of your eyes or looking out for suspicious

sounds, for example.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: Maybe we could all learn a little from this

about tuning in and really paying attention to the amazing

nature around us. Even if it's not a 400 kilo apex predator.

I'm getting a little bit excited because Rob stopped and he's got

the binoculars out so I'm hoping he's seen something. Maybe it's

a bear, I don't know. Let's have a look.

So, I might sound a little bit out of breath, because I got

very excited and ran, because Rob got his binoculars out and

started looking up to the top of a tree and I thought maybe it's

bear. Because they are really really nimble climbers despite

their size. They're very good at climbing. And they do spend some

time up in the tops of trees foraging food and sometimes

that's where the cubs go to kind of get out of the way of danger.

So, I very excitedly caught up but it wasn't a bear. But it was

quite an exciting thing nonetheless.

So he spotted a load of Crossbills, which are a really

cool species of finch. They do what they say on the tin,

they've got a crossed over bill. And they're a bird that's

specialized in kind of picking the seeds out of conifer cones,

pine cones, that kind of thing.

So they've evolved and adapted this funny crossed over bill.

And, it's quite exciting to see them.

It's not a species that I see very regularly. We do get them

in the UK, in Scotland, and in places where we've got lots of

conifer plantations, but I don't have much of that around where I

am, so it's quite an unusual species. And there's loads of

them. They're all chattering away up in the top of the tree.

So not a bear, but very exciting nonetheless.

So we've just been reflecting as we wandered through the sunshine

and next to this beautiful little stream that this habitat

here actually feels pretty similar to what we've got in

kind of the northern half of the UK.

It doesn't feel completely alien and completely different. These

rolling hills and steep-sided valleys feel really, really very

familiar. We were remarking that, you know, a thousand years

ago in the UK, we would have had this incredible biodiversity and

different array of species.

You know, we would have had Eurasian brown bears, we would

have had beavers, we would have had wolves. We would have had

all of these species which are now missing from our ecosystems

and you can really feel the difference.

So, here these woods, they're not being actively managed by

people, but because there's all of those different species here,

you know you've got the wild boar crunching up the

undergrowth and moving things around and giving opportunities

for tree seeds to sprout.

We've got big deer species but they're being moved through the

woodland by the wolves and by the bears. There's lynx who are

predating on the smaller deer, everything's kind of... much

more.

I'm not saying it's perfect here because people are everywhere

and people are tinkering with things, but it just feels like

much more wild. And it's kind of a little bit sad really

reflecting that at home, you know, one day it would have been

like this and it's not like that anymore because we've got the

population, the pressures, the numbers of people around and the

changes that we've made to our natural environment.

CSABA DOMOKOS: But still, whenever I see a bear, it

doesn't really matter if it's close or if it's further away,

it's still really a mixture of admiration and this kind of

feeling. And of, well, not necessarily fear, but you

somehow feel that there is something more than you there in

the forest.

You can experience this even without... seeing bears, just

simply knowing that you're in a habitat where there are things

that are stronger and bigger and faster than you.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: This was the exact feeling I had when we

found the bear print a few days earlier. It's an amazing primal

thrill that spikes your heart rate and fires your adrenaline

through the roof. It's Mother Nature giving you a nudge in the

ribs and saying, remember who's in charge here.

I'm ready for some hot chocolate. It's very hot. Slurp.

Oh Oh Isn't that nice?

HEBE: It's very hot.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: We'll let it cool down a bit. Why don't you

put your hands on it and they'll warm up. Oh, that's nice isn't

it?

So we haven't seen bears unfortunately but I have had a

fantastic time in the beautiful beautiful Carpathian Mountains.

Really, really recommend a visit to Transylvania to anyone who's

able to get here. It is an incredible place. The culture,

the people, the wildlife, the mountains, it's fantastic. So,

from me and from the beautiful Transylvanian countryside, see

you next time.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Wild Tales. If you've

enjoyed it, why not give us a follow or a review? And if you'd

like to find out more about the European brown bear in Romania,

then head to the episode show notes. I'm Rosie Holdsworth.

Bye-bye.