The construction of an EU-funded highway in central Romania has been stalled because authorities didn’t build underground passes for bears.

The state is unable to sign the contract to begin work on highway segment near the city of Deva because the lack of underground passes for bears means it can’t get environmental approval.

Prime Minister Victor Ponta on a local TV station on Wednesday evening, said the issue was not a laughing matter.

“It may seem hilarious, but it's nothing to laugh about in all this. We do not have the environment approval because we have to build an underground pass for bears. I love bears, I love all animals, but we have to build highways too so that people in this country stop dying in car accidents, so that we can develop economically, use this rich country, and use it well while keeping as much of the nature as possible,” said the Romanian PM.

Romania has over 6,000 brown bears, which is almost half the population of brown bears in the European Union.

The brown bear, which used to live all across Europe, has become almost extinct in many countries because of development, including of highway construction, urbanization, and hunting over recent centuries.

For example, in France and Austria, there are less than fifty brown bears still alive.

A new study suggests that Romanians care about their bears, with 78 percent believing that they should be protected from hunting and only 6 percent perceiving them as a threat to humans.

The study, carried out by animal protection NGO the WWF and Ipsos Research, shows that the bear-friendly Romanians are worried about the country's brown bear population.

The presence of wild bears in an area is a proof of a rich natural environment, unaltered by human development. In Romania, the brown bears lives across the Carpathian mountains, in big and thick forests.

editor@romania-insider.com