The 81-year-old French hunter was fined for killing an endangered bear on the mountains of the Pyrenees and handed him a suspended prison sentence of four months.
The man said he had no other options, but to set the brown bear on fire when he attacked him during a boar hunt in 2021.
The other 15 hunters have also been fined and must collectively pay more than 60,000 euros (£51,000) in damages to the Environmental Association, which filed a civil suit against them.
The 150kg female bear is called Caramels and has since been preserved by a taxidermist and is on display at the Museum of Natural History of Toulouse.
The Foix Criminal Court heard that when the two bear cubs appeared it was a Pyrenees boar hunt, the mountain range separating southern France and Spain.
Shortly afterwards, the mother appeared, charging the man and dragging him a few metres before shooting and killing the animal.
“She grabbed my left thigh and I panicked and fired a shot. She groaned, she went round me and bit my right calf, I fell, she was eating my legs,” he told the court.
“I reloaded my rifle and fired it.”
Filming took place at Montvalier Nature Reserve near Sex Village in Ariège. Prosecutors said they should not be there in the first place, as they were 1,300 feet (396m) outside the permitted hunting area.
But Fannie Campanyu, the defense attorney for the 14 hunters, criticized the “lack of indication that hunting is prohibited.”
The shooter was fined 750 euros, his rifle was confiscated and his hunting license was revoked.
In a statement, the Bear Conservation Association said it was making payments for us.
“All hunters were found guilty, but this is the most important thing for us,” Sabine Matraire, president of the association, was quoted as saying in Le Monde.
“We hope that following this ruling will raise awareness among the hunting community,” she added.
According to the area’s Tourism Bureau, brown bear populations had significantly decreased to the Pyreneans, with only about 70 remaining in 1954.
However, numbers have been climbing slowly since the 1990s when three bears were brought in from Slovenia as part of the reintroduction programme.
In 2024, the French Office of Biodiversity estimated that around 96 bears currently live in the mountain range.
