On October 3 last year, the Environmental Board issued an order authorizing the hunting of a total of five brown bears in five different areas to prevent damage. According to the order, bears had destroyed six beehives and 37 silage bales and killed at least 27 sheep in the affected areas between June and October. The bears had also repeatedly raided a cemetery in the Kivinõmme hunting district and damaged grain fields.

The court partially upheld an appeal filed by the nonprofit Estonia's Large Predators, finding that the Environmental Board's order authorizing brown bear hunting was unlawful in four of the affected areas. The board's authorization met legal requirements in only one area.

The court noted that the EU Habitats Directive lists the brown bear as a species requiring strict protection. Killing a bear is permitted only in exceptional circumstances and such decisions must be supported by precise and adequate justification.

The Environmental Board must be able to demonstrate, based on reliable scientific data, that an exceptional hunting permit is an appropriate means of achieving its objective, such as protecting people or property. The court found that a satisfactory alternative cannot be dismissed without thorough consideration simply because implementing it would be costly or inconvenient. It added that lethal intervention can only be justified as a last resort to address a problem when other methods are not feasible.

The administrative court assessed the hunting permits for each affected area separately and identified significant shortcomings in the Environmental Board's documentation and justification for four of the permits. In those cases, the board had failed to adequately demonstrate that no effective alternative measures were available to protect people and their property.

In the one area where the board's authorization met legal requirements, a bear had killed at least 27 sheep in five attacks and raided one beehive. Measures had been taken in the area to prevent bear attacks, including installing electric fences to protect apiaries and sheep, bringing livestock indoors at night and keeping livestock guardian dogs on some properties.

The court emphasized that not every conceivable measure needs to be tested in practice before an exemption can be granted. However, decisions not to use measures that appear suitable at first glance, as well as claims that such measures would be ineffective, must be justified using objective evidence. While the occurrence of damage may indicate that the measures implemented were not sufficiently effective, it does not prove that improving those measures or using other nonlethal methods would fail to prevent or sufficiently reduce the damage.

The risk of serious damage and the absence of another satisfactory alternative are separate conditions for granting an exemption. Demonstrating the former does not eliminate the need to demonstrate the latter. The responsibility for determining and proving that no satisfactory alternative exists rests with the Environmental Board, not with the environmental organization bringing the appeal or anyone else.

During the court proceedings, the Environmental Board also acknowledged that, in several of the affected areas, possible alternatives to bear hunting had not been analyzed in detail or their purported use had not been documented.

An appeal may be filed with Tallinn Circuit Court by December 7.

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