Head up into the mountains of Cantabria to experience the landscape and people that live in harmony with the brown bear.

This is wild . . .really wild! It’s just gone 5.00 am and we’re at four thousand feet plus, with a sheer one hundred foot of scree and layers of low cloud beneath us and it’s freezing. What little vegetation there is shoulders dewdrops that glisten in the first rays of the morning sun. The air is still and silent, and there is a palpable sense of anticipation as we train our spotting scopes on the craggy limestone peaks and the wooded slopes and pasture that cloak the valley opposite.

Clothed in fleece, woolly hat and gloves, I’ve joined a Naturetrek group in search of a sighting of the endangered European brown bear. Our base is in Pola de Somiedo, a pretty little village nestling deep in a valley in the spectacular Somiedo Natural Park in the western Cordillera Cantabrica.

Established in 1988, the Somiedo Natural Park was declared a Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO in 2000 and covers approximately 29,000 hectares of some of the most scenic peaks and valleys in the region, with craggy limestone cliffs, magnificent beech and oak forests and fast - flowing rivers and streams.

Within this protected area, the brown bear population has grown steadily over recent years with the population of females increasing by no less than 60% in the last ten years. However, they still face an uphill struggle with illegal snares, habitat loss and the occasional incidence of poisoning. Indeed, only as recently as 2006 a mature male was found poisoned in the Somiedo Park.

Many find it hard to believe that bear hunting was legal in Spain up until 1967 and total protection for bears on the Iberian Peninsula was only put into place in 1973. In those early years however, it seems that the authorities were without real teeth, as between 1979 - 83, a shocking 25 bears were killed by poachers across the full range of the Cordillera Cantabrica. Since that time there has been a concerted effort by the authorities, with specific organisations such as the Odo Pardo Fundacion who train and employ wardens to police and monitor the indigineous bear population.

Our guide Gloria Suarez works on behalf of the Oso Pardo Fundacion and, being brought up in Pola, she knows the area well.
“We see about six bears each Spring,” she tells me, “but that’s spending about 25-30 hours a week actively looking - including searching for bear tracks and droppings.” Gloria’s patience seems super-human. “About three weeks ago,” she continues, “I spent many hours up above the village of Caunedo and saw nothing. That weekend I went to see a friend in Gua, a few kilometres down the valley, and one of her neighbours told me that she’d seen a bear crossing the road only a few days ago. These things happen.”

It is also surprising how important these small rural communities are to the welfare of the bear. “More and more young people are leaving these small rural communities,” says Gloria, “and the old naturally die off. Very soon there is nobody left and the village is abandoned. The bears seemingly have a dependency on these small rural settlements and, as a consequence of this abandonment, they lose their food source and move away.”

I wanted to check out a bear myth, to find out whether it might be true: Do bears like honey? “Sure,” says Gloria, trying to stifle a laugh in the early morning silence. “There was one bear who raided a beekeeper’s hives in the small village of Fresneo not so long ago, before eating a domestic goat and going through the rubbish bins.”

The sun’s warming rays are already having an effect, and the majority of our group has stripped down to tshirts and shorts. There are also one or two red circled eye sockets! We move on a further fifty metres to a grassy ledge covered in buttercup and white saxifrage, before tucking into a late morning snack of Spanish baguette stuffed with either chorizo, local cheese or (my choice) sardines, all washed down with a particularly sweet and syrupy banana and peach fruit juice. Just below us is the Brana de Mumian, one of the many dotted around the Somiedo Park.

“The Branas were used by farmers and vaquieros in the summer months to shelter their livestock,” explains Gloria. “Sadly many have now fallen into disrepair and ruin as habits and rural lifestyles change.”

So when they’re not raiding the local village store, what do bears feed on, I wondered. “The bear’s diet has changed,” says Gloria. “Bears used to eat a lot of acorns and bilberries. Now they’re eating more apples, cherries and blackberries.
“Bears also eat a lot of carrion,” she continues, “but that food supply has begun to disappear. After the scare over mad cow disease in 2001, the EU passed a law declaring that all dead sheep, cows and pigs must be destroyed. Whereas before animals were left to die in the countryside, there is now very little except for wild rebeco and chamois.”

As we carefully pick our way back along the narrow path, one of our group notices a distinctive stool amongst some smaller stones.

“The bulbous end means that it is wolf poo,” says Gloria. “It’s still relatively fresh, so a wolf must have passed along this path within the last twelve to twenty four hours. There are four packs in the Somiedo,” she continues. “We often hear them, but rarely see them. Tomorrow we will visit the Saliencia valley below the Farrapona Pass where we have recently found tracks and more droppings - we might be lucky.”

For the most part, though, our scopes are filled with both red and roe deer, of which there are large populations in the Park. They graze the verdant lower reaches of the valleys where the pasture is plentiful and browse on the copses of oak and birch. Group member Basil Warren ushers us over in hushed tones.

“Just below that crag with the light beam on it, there’s a grassy knoll. . . there’s something just to the left of that - and it isn’t a deer.” We all take a look through his scope - nothing!

“Bears move surprisingly quickly. Maybe tomorrow,” says Gloria.