Carla Bruni, France’s First Lady, has drawn the wrath of Pyrenean farmers by taking up the cause of local brown bears, whose reintroduction has fuelled a violent feud between naturalists and sheep breeders.

The anti-bear camp dismissed Ms Bruni, a supermodel and pop singer, as a typical animal-loving city slicker after she weighed into the quarrel that has raged since Jacques Chirac, the previous President, moved to rescue the dwindling bear population three years ago.

“It’s annoying to see celebrities sponsoring the bears without understanding the consequences,” Louis Dollo, a former farmer and anti-bear activist, said. “We do not give a hoot about the views of Parisians, civil servants or the wife of the President,” he told The Times.

President Sarkozy, who married Ms Bruni in February, has so far stayed out of the “bear wars”, which pit environmentalists against farmers and local politicians who say the bears kill sheep and threaten their livelihoods.

Ms Bruni, the epitome of the Parisian left-wing upper class, agreed in 2006 to be “godmother” to Hvala, one of five bears brought in from Slovenia to replenish a population that had dwindled to about 15. Hvala gave birth to two cubs, named Bamboo and Pollen, in January last year.

Responding to a call for support, President Sarkozy’s staff wrote to pro-bear organisations saying that she backed the project enthusiastically. “There should be no question, in our country, of choosing between bear and man,” she said. “We must find a balanced means of coexistence. On one hand, the presence of bears in the Pyrenees reflects a willingness to protect biodiversity . . . on the other, the support of the local population is essential.” Ms Bruni was optimistic about the future of her “goddaughter’s” offspring, the Élysée Palace said.

The First Lady’s enthusiasm will go down badly in the villages and farms in the French Pyrenees, where resentment over the bear scheme seems to border on the irrational. The bears’ defenders say that there is little evidence that the animals cause much damage and they point to the untroubled existence of bears on the Spanish side of the mountains. The French opposition is driven by ancestral resentment of outsiders, they say.

The anti-bear camp, which pillaged a village mayor’s offices and burnt statues two years ago, deplores the way that the bears, which are tracked electronically, have been endowed with celebrity status. Banners in hostile villages proclaim: “Go home to Slovenia”. The opponents cheer the bears’ misfortunes, such as the accidents that killed two of the imported animals last year. Mr Chirac ordered the repopulation after a hunter shot dead Cannelle, the last pure-blood native Pyrenean bear, in 2004. He called the shooting an environmental disaster. The hunter was acquitted on appeal last April of charges of illegally killing the animal.

The bear watchers report that Ms Bruni’s “goddaughter” has been spotted in the Aran valley, on the Spanish side, in the company of a male. “That bodes well for more cubs from her in the winter,” an official from the main bear protection agency said.

Police and wildlife experts are still trying to find a bear that was hit by a minibus on a Pyrenean motorway last Saturday. The animal limped into the forest, leaving blood and fur on the wing of the vehicle. The experts believe that the animal survived and was probably Boutxy, the biggest and toughest of the young Slovenian bears that were released in 2006.

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