Spain's Bears don't cry Wolf an interview with Juan Carlos Blanco Spain s wilderness still provides a refuge for large predators such as the Brown bear and the wolf, species which have all but disappeared in most of Europe. Juan Carlos Blanco is a doctor in Biology and one of the founding members of the Brown Bear Foundation, one of Spain s most progressive private conservation bodies. As well as being concerned about bears he is an authority on the Iberian wolf which is the subject of one of his books and a number of his scientific papers. In this 1995 interview by Damian Martin, Juan Carlos Blanco clears up some of the myths surrounding wolf and bear conservation in Spain. Although population figures have been updated in recent years the main conservation issues remain true today.
Bears are in danger of becoming extinct.
80 bears left in all of Spain and their numbers are decreasing. There are also bears in the Spanish Pyrenees but these number one or two at the most and will probably become extinct very soon. That is the situation today concerning bears. The wolf however is faring better. We estimated there were some 2,000 wolves in Spain in 1988 and it is considered to be a growing population.